Police budget cuts won’t jeopardize safety, Tory says

Mayor challenges union claim against task force recommendations.

Thestar.com
Dec. 8, 2016
By Betsy Powell

Mayor John Tory says public safety won’t be jeopardized by police budget cuts, and suggestions to the contrary are misleading.

The Toronto Police Association is currently blitzing residents with robocall invitations to participate in evening tele-town halls this week where panellists offer their views on the impact of a moratorium on hiring and promotions as recommended by a policing task force.

The so-called Transformational Task Force has released an interim report with 24 recommendations, including shrinking the number of uniform officers by about 10 per cent, from 5,235 this year to about 4,800 by 2019.

The report says that will help trim $100 million over three years from the $1 billion-plus budget as the service redefines how it delivers services, including a shift from primary to priority response so officers spend more time responding to emergency calls.

“These kind of cuts impact crime, they impact community safety,” TPA president Mike McCormack told listeners who dialed in. “They can lead to lower response times, less success in reducing and preventing crime and low morale among our officers.”

On Thursday, Tory said McCormack has “a job to do as a union leader.”

“I have a different job to do which is protect the overall interest of the entire city,” Tory told reporters. “Nothing that we are going to do in the cause of reforming and modernizing policing will ever put public safety in jeopardy. Anybody who suggests otherwise is trying to mislead people.”

Tory said that overhauling Toronto Police Service is “important work” and appealed to critics to work together to modernize policing and reduce the TPS budget in a sensible way.

“People can either sit down at the table and talk to us about how to do it because it has to be done or they can adopt a different approach and follow that kind of path,” Tory said. “I know what I have to do. I am the mayor and I have to keep the city safe but also modernize policing and make sure the budget is reasonable.”

In addition to fighting the staff reduction, the TPA is also refusing to agree to change the shift schedule which the task force says would permit the service to deploy resources more flexibly.