With a love of hiking, cross-country skiing and other outdoor pursuits, the Shuswap was a logical fit for Dave Dubnyk.
The RCMP sergeant recently migrated from Elk Valley to Sicamous, where he’s taken on the duty of detachment commander. The position was vacated in September by Sgt. Carl Vinet, who left for Nanaimo to become an RCMP professional standards investigator with the detachment there.
Dubnyk brings with him 22 years of experience in the force, and has worked in a variety of positions ranging from major crime to professional standards to general duty supervisor. His last posting was as operations supervisor for the Elk Valley detachment.
“I think that benefits me in a position like this because I know the administrative side of the RCMP, but I’m also very hands-on on the operation side,” says Dubnyk. “I’ve got a background with general duty and major crime investigation. I instruct on the search warrant course and that type of thing, so I’ve got a pretty vast operational background.”
Dubnyk is looking forward to further expanding his CV as Sicamous’ detachment commander. Though he says it was the area that attracted him to the position.
“The way our system works is, we can indicate our preferences for anywhere in the province and Sicamous was one I had on my list, so I got a phone call from our staffing officer there about nine months ago and asked if I was still interested in Sicamous, which obviously I was and it didn’t take much time to think about that,” says Dubnyk who shares a love for outdoor activities with his wife.
“When we lived in Kamloops, we did an awful lot of hiking around Adams River and really got to like that area. So like I say, we’ve kind of had this on our radar since leaving.”
In addition to further exploring the area by foot (and ski), Dubnyk says he’s interested in acquiring a boat. Professionally, however, the sergeant has already had an opportunity to take in Shuswap Lake when he upgraded his police boat training back in April.
“I had training many years ago in Kootenay Lake, and most recently updated my training for the police boat patrols here,” says Dubnyk. “It will be far more extensive now, living right on a lake like this. In my previous detachments, we’ve had lakes in the detachment area but not right at the shoreline like this.”
Dubnyk has yet to meet with district council to discuss municipal priorities for 2013, but explains the RCMP also have national and provincial priorities, and they all tend to build off each other.
“Drugs and organized crime is a national and provincial priority, so that’s a priority of ours as well, and that’s everything from vehicles passing through and transporting drugs, to targeting local, known drug dealers, to eradicating marijuana grow operations,…” says Dubnyk. “I’d certainly like to focus on the marijuana grow operations because that’s kind of the root level of the drug problems.”
Dubnyk also plans to build a strong rapport with local schools, particularly the high school, with a goal of being able to share information critical to assuring public safety. This links to another goal of Dubnyk’s: to provide Sicamous officers with Immediate Action Rapid Deployment (IARD) training.
“Heaven forbid, if there ever was an incident here, locally, with a shooter in school or whatever, we want to make sure our officers are fully trained to respond immediately,” says Dubnyk.