Councillor wants to “inject” prolific offenders with gps

The City of Williams Lake will be looking at tabling a recommendation that will track prolific offenders’ every move at the upcoming NCLGA and UBCM.

Councillor Scott Nelson, wants to take the motion which would use GPS tracking one step further, and explains to us the recommendation that was made by himself and Mayor Walt Cobb following the approval of 3 more cameras downtown during last night’s regular City Council meeting.

“What we’ve done is bring forward the recommendation is to inject hardcore prolific offenders and high risk offenders with a GPS, which will monitor their every minute movements throughout a community 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.”

As for the issue of human rights and privacy, Nelson says he believes the collective of the community needs to supercede individual rights at this point in time.

“We are talking about a core group of prolific offenders and high risk offenders here, we’re not talking about the average joe citizen, we are talking about a key group of individuals who simply don’t care about a community, they don’t care about laws, they care about themselves, that’s who they are targeting.”

Nelson says current monitoring devices are too easy for offenders to remove, while Mayor Walt Cobb says they’re only worn during their sentences.

There are as many as 20 prolific offenders in Williams Lake, with 100 high risk offenders.

(Editor’s note: The original story which was published and aired on February 24,2016 reporting that Council as a whole supported Nelson’s recommendation was incorrect. The story has since been edited with the correct information.)