Former Toronto Mayor John Sewell Speaks Out On The Burden Of Soaring Policing Costs – Something We In Niagara Need To Speak Out About Too!

By John Sewell

(The following is an open letter former Toronto mayor John Sewell wrote to his city’s newly elected mayor, Rob Ford, on the unsustainable cost of policing in the Toronto area. We in Niagara ought to take heed. Soaring policing costs are mugging taxpayers here too. This letter is being printed in Niagara At Large with the permission John Sewell. NAL: urges you to read it and share your comments below.)

Dear Mayor Ford,

The New Year has hardly begun, but a grand opportunity is being presented to you to stop the gravy train.

Former Toronto mayor John Sewell

I know that ending the sense of entitlement within city services is a big priority for you, as is ensuring that taxpayers get good value for their tax dollars.

So when the 2011 operating budget for the police service comes before the Toronto Police Services Board this afternoon, I hope you will be ready to act. Three of your colleagues are on the board — councillors Frances Nunziata, Michael Thompson and Chin Lee — which means you effectively control the majority and shouldn’t have any trouble moving ahead.

The police service is proposing a business-as-usual budget. City budget guidelines require budgets be drawn up on the assumption of a 5 per cent decrease in spending, the same requirement as for last year.

As usual, police services have disregarded this instruction, and are submitting a budget for a net spending increase of 3 per cent or $26.7 million to total net expenditure of $915 million. This does not include the wage increase still to be negotiated for 2011, and that will add at least another $25 million, so the increase will be closer to 5 per cent.

If the guideline had been followed, the police budget request would have been $844 million, or at least $70 million less.

But lucky for you, there’s a lot of gravy in that budget, so the financial cuts can be made without cutting services. Here are a few examples of where the gravy is in the police service:

Chief Bill Blair noted in this budget request that in 2010 the police responded to 578,000 calls for service to the end of November — about 630,000 for the full year. There are 5,600 officers, which means that on average each officer responded to about 110 calls in 2010. Since each officer works about 220 shifts per year, this means that each officer responded to one call for service every two shifts.

I think most residents of the city will be astounded to learn that Toronto’s finest respond to so few calls — only one every second shift. This is not a productive use of the time of city employees paid about $75,000 a year.

And it is not as if officers are making arrests on every shift. The average number of arrests per officer in Toronto, as it is in other Canadian cities, is seven to eight per year, that is, one arrest every six weeks, only one crime of which is a crime of serious violence.

There’s a related point. A recent Environmental Assessment Report from the police service notes that police now spend eight hours on every Priority 1 call, and that’s double the amount of time spent on such calls 10 years ago. The time spent on personal injury vehicle accidents has increased 33 per cent in four years. I suspect police spend more time on these incidents simply because they do not have a lot else to do.

Here’s a second example of gravy. Police work three shifts a day: a 10-hour day shift; a 10-hour evening shift; and an eight-hour night shift. That means that in every 24 hours, police are paid to work 28 hours. The shift overlaps do not occur during the evening hours when calls for service are highest. Getting police to work just 24 hours every day — cutting out the four hours of gravy — would require about 15 per cent less resources, in itself a saving of about $100 million a year.

A third example is the two-man police car. After 5 p.m., police work two officers to a car. Evidence shows one-man cars are safer than two-man cars (since a single officer doesn’t take the chances that two do), and putting two officers in a car to mostly drive around aimlessly during the evening hours, is an extraordinary waste of money. You can see why police officers are usually associated with Tim Hortons and doughnuts — they don’t have a lot to do.

Other examples could be cited, but it is clear that the police budget is a gravy train par excellence. Police boards in the past have never been willing to tackle the problems of entitlement that consume so many public dollars. You have a mandate to deal with the gravy train, and you have the people on the police board to carry out your wishes.

There’s a related point. I know that helping kids get involved in healthy recreation is a personal priority for you — it is why you have spent so much time being a football coach. The dollars spent on gravy in the police services should be used instead for recreation and social programs for children — the real ways to reduce crime and criminal behaviour as shown in the Roots of Youth Violence report by Roy McMurtry and Alvin Curling.

How much of the budget is gravy? In the United Kingdom the government has decided a cut in the police budget of 19 per cent is in order. Margaret Thatcher cut police services in the U.K. by an even larger amount, and so did New York City in the 1980s. Disaster did not occur — instead, police services had to look closely at what they really needed to spend money on.

In Toronto, the moderate course of action would be follow the city budget guideline, and agree on a police budget of $844 million for 2011. That would be a good start.

I know the police will yell bloody murder, since they think they are entitled to whatever they ask for. They live in a culture of entitlement, but as you know that’s normal for those on the gravy train. But your mandate gives you some muscle.

I hope you take this opportunity and use that muscle. Best wishes.

John Sewell is a former mayor of Toronto. His most recent book is Police in Canada, the Real Story.

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