magster65
New Member
Through the winter months around lower Vancouver island there's more law enforcement boats than pleasurecraft on the water... seriously. Here the coast guard are the good guys for search and rescue. They just wave and continue on their way but we also have local police, the federal RCMP and now these new 'unmarked border guards' (kinda' obvious though) lurking everywhere. They all want to check you out. We're over-policed on the water now, plain and simple. There's no terrorist activity here. There's no drug-runners or rum-runners... there's very few accidents. Any theft or crime is handled by land based police... and you won't see many high speed pursuits since 90% of the boats are sail and trawlers.
All this law enforcement has nothing to do but stop boats for 'safety checks'. It's not at all like going through a road block; a road block is a quick chat with an officer and you're on your way. On the water it's completely different. This is usually a 20 to 30 minute invasion of your privacy. I've been stopped many times over the years and generally speaking the cops are ok to deal with (some really good) but the point is I don't want to deal with them... thats why I'm boating in the first place... to get away from all the activity.
The financial aspect... yeah my tax dollars; I bet around the lower island there's no less than 40 of these 24' 500hp boats @ $150k plus each with 2 or 3 officers per shift / per boat cruising around all day (on plane). We're boaters... we know how expensive that is! Is it worth it? In this area... of course not! The 'boys' are nice most of the time and they do a good job but there's too many of them and in the wrong place.
The government should put that money in to cancer research or the childrens hospital or... how about lowering taxes!? There's a novel idea...
All this law enforcement has nothing to do but stop boats for 'safety checks'. It's not at all like going through a road block; a road block is a quick chat with an officer and you're on your way. On the water it's completely different. This is usually a 20 to 30 minute invasion of your privacy. I've been stopped many times over the years and generally speaking the cops are ok to deal with (some really good) but the point is I don't want to deal with them... thats why I'm boating in the first place... to get away from all the activity.
The financial aspect... yeah my tax dollars; I bet around the lower island there's no less than 40 of these 24' 500hp boats @ $150k plus each with 2 or 3 officers per shift / per boat cruising around all day (on plane). We're boaters... we know how expensive that is! Is it worth it? In this area... of course not! The 'boys' are nice most of the time and they do a good job but there's too many of them and in the wrong place.
The government should put that money in to cancer research or the childrens hospital or... how about lowering taxes!? There's a novel idea...