York region council approves police hires

The region's police service says it needs as many as 130 extra officers over the next four years to keep up with population growth, despite a drop in crime.


Thestar.com
March 8, 2015
By Noor Javed

As police boards across the GTA pull back on spending and new hires, York Region council has approved a police budget that could see as many as 180 police staff hired over the next four years.

York Region approved a $2.7-billion budget, with an increase of 2.97 per cent for 2015. They also approved the York Regional Police budget - including a request to hire 33 officers and 13 civilian staff in 2015.

The York Regional Police service says additional officers are needed to deal with population growth in the large municipality, although the force’s own statistics show the region is one of the safest in Canada.

“There is a misperception that crime rate is the only key performance indicator on how a police service performs,” said Jeffrey Channell, manager of financial services for the police service. “But there is quite a bit more to it.”

Crime prevention, law enforcement, assistance to victims of crime and emergency response are all important elements of policing, he said.

In a presentation to council earlier this month, Chief Eric Jolliffe said the 2014 crime rate was down compared with the previous year, and only 20 per cent of calls received were crime-related. The rest were about non-criminal issues including missing persons, mental health crises, community engagement and community events.

The force had put forward an operating budget of $287 million, an increase of 3.2 per cent over last year. Channell said that’s the lowest hike in 19 years and that, per capita, York is still one of the most efficient forces in the GTA.

Last week, councillors finalized the 2015 budget, including the police budget. About 30 cents of every regional tax dollar is spent on police.

The budget was finalized after exhaustive discussions among councillors on how to ensure budget increases would stay under 3 per cent. They decided to reduce hiring at the regional level to help cut costs, but were hesitant to ask police to do the same. Police plan to hire 129 police officers and 51 civilian staff over the next four years, said Channell.

“My position was that if we are going to ask staff to share in doing more with less, it’s only fair to ask the police to do the same,” said Newmarket regional councillor John Taylor, who put forth a motion to have the police reduce their budget by $500,000.

His motion failed to sway council, he said.

“I said to council, I think a reduction of this size is more symbolic and probably wouldn’t even be hard to achieve. But I didn’t get support.”

Toronto police have also faced intense pressure to keep costs down. Last year, the force had a zero increase in the budget, and recently found $5 million in cuts. Durham Regional Police also presented council with a 1.59 per cent increase, and have hired no additional officers for the past six budgets.

In addition to hiring more officers this year, the York Region police force is building a new $30.4-million training facility in East Gwillimbury and a $2.5-million marine headquarters on Lake Simcoe in Georgina.