1. Police service 2024 operating budget request.
Ways to reduce spending:
2. Diverting more mental crisis and social crisis calls
3. Public events – parades and demonstrations
4. Police patrol
5. Tickets and trafficking
6. Two officers in a car after dark
Toronto Police Accountability Bulletin No. 148, December 14, 2023.
This Bulletin is published by the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition (TPAC), a group of individuals and organizations in Toronto interested in police policies and procedures, and in making police more accountable to the community they are committed to serving. Our website is http://www.tpac.ca .
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In this issue:
1. Police service 2024 operating budget request.
Ways to reduce spending:
2. Diverting more mental crisis and social crisis calls
3. Public events – parades and demonstrations
4. Police patrol
5. Tickets and trafficking
6. Two officers in a car after dark
7. Subscribe to the Bulletin
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1. Police service 2024 operating budget request
Chief Myron Demkiw’s report to the Toronto Police Service Board claims that the budget increase requested for 2024 is 1.7 per cent more than 2023, but that is misleading: the budget for 2024 as presented does not include the pay increases which will result from the 2024 collective agreement negotiations. If we assume the collective agreement will provide a pay increase of 2.5 per cent for 2024, that will add $25 million to the 2024 budget. (Compensation for 2023 was $908 million; benefits were a further $125 million; a 2.5 per cent increase of this amount of just over $1 billion would cost $25 million.) If it is 3 per cent, it will add $30 million.
In reality, the police service is asking for an increase of at least 4.2 per cent – or some $45 million more than in 2023.
The chief is asking for an additional 307 officers and an additional 100 civilians, for a total of 407 additional staff – a very substantial increase. He states this increase is needed because of the a 22 per cent increase in major crime, but the data he presents does not support his conclusion. The chart on page 11 of his report shows that major crime varies from year to year, sometimes up and sometimes down, but with the exception of auto theft, major crime in 2023 was no higher than it was over the last five years. And lower than it was in 2015. (The Toronto Police Association made the same erroneous claim in the flier it distributed to many households in the last few days.)
The chief says he needs more officers because the population of the city has grown so quickly. Yes, the population has grown but serious crime has not. And while he might lament that Toronto has fewer officers per capita than many other cities - comparisons are made with Montreal and Vancouver, as well as with American cities – he never mentions that Toronto has the lowest Crime Severity Index, according to Statistics Canada, of any city in Canada save Quebec City. The number of police officers per capita has no relation to the level of crime or the feeling of safely in a community.
The Board must find ways to reduce the 2024 police service budget. It must reject the argument that Toronto is a violent city and that only the police can resolve these issues. We propose a serious look at what police do and how we can provide more safety and service to our city while reducing police expenditures.
Hiring more police officers, as this budget requests, is not a smart strategy. A recent article in The Conversation notes: “The continued over-investment in policing is a limited and contradictory approach to safety. For one thing, police forces don’t address the root causes of violence and other harms. Research has shown the “deterrence effect” of policing to be weak, while aggressive policing often impairs the social relations and institutions that normally keep violence and conflict in check.
The article concludes, “The broad imperative is to significantly reduce police budgets for 2024, while reallocating funding to some of the many services and programs that give people more safety and police less work to do.” See https://theconversation.com/canadian-cities-continue-to-over-invest-in-policing-217344
Here are five ways that TPAC is asking the Toronto Police Services Board to change and reduce the budget, and reduce the number of officers. We urge readers of this Bulletin to write the Police Board for it’s December 19 meeting asking that it make these changes. See www.tpsb.ca and click on Meetings, then Deputations where there is information about filing a letter to the Board. Please send a copy of the letter to us at info@tpac.ca .
2. Diverting more mental crisis and other `social crisis’ calls
Finally a system has been created to divert some of these calls to the Toronto Community Crisis Centre primarily run by the Gerstein Centre. But only 1000 calls were diverted, and 12,000 were handled by police. The ratio of calls diverted should change, so that 12,000 calls are diverted to the Crisis Centre and 1000 are handled by police.
The police service states that there were 129 instances of youth pre-charge diversions, or one every third day for all 5000 officers. This is an astonishing low number. Clearly youth diversion is not a priority for the police service. Keeping youth out of the criminal justice system should be a priority: once a youth is caught in the criminal justice system, life chances deteriorate significantly, at great cost to society and to the individual.
The ineffectiveness of current police practise can be seen in the Neighbourhood Policing data. Some 246 uniformed officers are assigned to neighbourhood policing, and they made a total of 288 referrals to social agencies during the first nine months of 2023 – just over one per officer during a period of 300 days. This is hardly an efficient use of resources.
The Police Board should take some of the funds in the police budget devoted to this purpose - $20 million – and give it to community agencies dealing with youth.
We don’t know how many officers deal with homelessness and drug overdose calls but one suspects it is significant. Again, these calls are much better handled by non-police personnel, and the public funds provided to these community agencies than to the police.
3. Public events – parades, demonstrations, etc.
The police service states it dealt with about 3600 such events in 2023 at a cost of $30 million, assigning 103 uniformed staff and 40 civilians. It is a significant waste of resources to require so many armed police officers at these events. The Police Board should immediately change the ratio at these events to be 40 officers and 103 civilians, thus reducing the number of uniformed officers required, and saving significant amount of money – perhaps $10 million in 2024, as well as freeing up 63 officers.
4. Police patrol
The chief reports that about half the total budget - $511 million – is spent on patrol and 911 responses, involving 1600 uniformed officers and 885 civilians. Random patrol, driving around the city to see what is going on, is a great waste of time, money and police resources. Fire departments stopped doing random patrols more than a century ago. Patrol work does nothing to reduce crime, and it does not make people feel any safer, as the famous Kansas City study concluded many years ago, and as confirmed by University of Toronto criminologist Richard Ericson in his study `Making Crime.’ (Some people feel more unsafe with police patrol.)
The Board should indicate it wishes to stop random patrols, with significant savings in staff and public money. Instead, police should be available for priority responses, and in all likelihood, fewer officers than 1600 would. be needed.
5. Traffic and ticketing
The chief reports that $63 million is spent on traffic and parking – 319 uniformed officers and 80 civilians, and he proposes hiring an additional 10 officers to deal with traffic congestion.
Do we really need officers with a gun, a taser, a baton and body armour to be doing this work? The Board should start by reversing this ratio to 80 uniformed officers and 319 civilians, and refuse the request to expand the number of officers. Toronto parking officers can do most of this work just as effectively for much less money.
The police should concentrate on violent crime and community safety, not on traffic management.
6. Two officers in a car after dark
In 2019, agreement was reached with the Toronto Police Association to loosen the rule requiring two officers in a car after dark. The agreement stated `Where the parties agree that officer and public safety will not be compromised, they may mutually agree to modify or waive the application of the two officer patrol car requirement in order to improve the capacity of the Service to more flexibly meet operational demands.’ Nevertheless, the general practice remains that there are two officers in a car after dark.
It is really unfortunate the chief never mentions this issue in his budget report.
Some 97 per cent of calls for police service do not involve violence, and for those calls the police response should not involve two officers in a car. Using this approach, some 200 officers could be freed up with only one officer in a car during nighttime shifts for these calls. The savings in 2024 if dispensing with the rule of two officers in a car after dark were implemented immediately would be considerable since 200 fewer officers would be needed on the force.
7. Subscribe to the Bulletin
To subscribe or unsubscribe to this Bulletin, please send a note to info@tpac.ca with the instructions in the subject line or in the text of the message. Our e-mail list is confidential and will not be made available to others. There is no charge for the Bulletin. Our website is http://www.tpac.ca .
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