Toronto Police ponder outsourcing parking enforcement

Ticketing program is currently handled by a 394-member unit, nearly all civilians.

Thestar.com
Sept. 19, 2016
By Ellen Brait

Do you want one of the most hated jobs in the world? Then the Toronto Police Service may have the perfect role for you: handing out parking tickets.

The police are seeking feedback from third parties interested in operating all or some of the service's Parking Enforcement Unit.

It’s part of a plan to implement the 24 recommendations outlined in the Transformational Task Force Interim Report, which was released June 17 and aims to address a range of issues, including ways to curb the $1-billion-plus police budget and to foster public trust.

Specifically, outsourcing might help address the 21st recommendation, which suggests assessing “whether there are better alternatives to the current Parking Enforcement Unit that will lower operating costs."

The Parking Enforcement Unit has 394 members, according to police spokesperson Meaghan Gray. All but eight members of the unit are civilian officers. The eight uniformed police officers are in administrative roles.

Gray says the service wants to hear from outside agencies interested in providing some or all of the services currently handled by the unit.

"Once we get that feedback we'll be able to research those options to see whether or not going forward would be the best thing for the service in order to get the same effective services, but perhaps done more efficiently," Gray said.

Budget also plays a role, Gray said, as the service is "constantly under pressure for our operational budget."

Mike McCormack, president of the Toronto Police Association, says the union has examined how the Parking Enforcement Unit runs and "we believe it's the best system."

"The officers are accountable, it's transparent, they're very efficient at getting traffic moving, and from a cost-benefit analysis it is a revenue-positive unit," he said.

He also worries that trying to privatize something like the parking unit will lead to it being "driven by profit and driven by the bottom line."

Christian Leuprecht, a professor at the Royal Military College of Canada and Queen’s University, can see both pros and cons. He agrees that outsourcing parking enforcement could lead to an "incentive to maximize tickets" which could lead to "hundreds of calls from angry constituents" to the city council about why people are being ticketed so often.

Either way, Leuprecht calls himself an "advocate for innovative policing services." He believes it's important for Toronto to "take the lead on these things" as one of Canada's largest police agencies.

"We need Toronto to think innovatively to generate some of this conversation," he said. "The question is whether this is genuine innovation."