This weekend's gang-related shooting in Gregor Robertson's neighbourhood has prompted the mayor to renew his call for a Metro Vancouver regional police force -- as well as a B.C. force.
The Sunday morning shooting that left 10 people with bullet wounds happened about a block from Robertson's Shaughnessy home, and he says the gang warfare behind it should be a driving force for all levels of government to look into regional policing.
"It's a good time to do that. With the new leadership in Victoria and the RCMP contract [ending in 2012], we've got an opportunity to design it the way it should work best," he told CTV News.
"Metro Vancouver has a very fragmented approach to policing with many detachments and departments."
Rob Gordon, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University, has studied policing models from all over the world, and believes the provincial model used by Ontario is much better than B.C.'s hodgepodge.
"We're a policing anomaly in Canada," Gordon said.
"Vancouver should be treated as a metropolitan area, not as a collection of parishes. It is that problem-- that parochial view of things -- which is causing a lot of the service delivery problems."
Almost two years ago, the B.C. government initiated a plan to fight gangs and guns.
In an announcement on Tuesday, Solicitor General Rich Coleman boasted that, "More than 200 organized crime and gang members and associates have been arrested and charged with over 400 serious offences since the strategy was unveiled."
Some Liberal leadership candidates say that the current policing model should stay -- and so should the Mounties.
"They're making significant progress. What we have to do is make sure that we do not let up," Kevin Falcon said.
George Abbott agrees. "There's been lots of great work done in recent years in terms of integration," he said.
And Christy Clark believes it may already be too late to get rid of the RCMP.
"It is my understanding that that deal with the RCMP is pretty close to being finished, so I don't think that is something we're going to get to reconsider. What we need to do now is to move on," she said.
Proponents say the RCMP contract should only be extended for a year or two, so that all policing models can be debated openly and fairly.
With a report from CTV British Columbia's Peter Grainger