Girt makes last police budget pitch

Retiring chief presents request for 2.98 per cent hike; gun violence, mental-health calls in focus

Outgoing Hamilton police chief Eric Girt made his final budget pitch to city council — a 2.98 per cent hike for 2021 — before heading into retirement after a 35-year career.

The budget request for a $5.1million increase is above council’s cap of two per cent for boards and agencies.

The primary driver of the police budget hike are employeerelated costs at $4.37 million, Girt told councillors during a budget session Thursday.

“The bulk of that is the collective agreement issues,” he said.

The police budget is about 18.5 per cent of the city’s overall roughly billion-dollar operating plan, or $171 million.

During his presentation, Girt focused on police’s programs to respond to mental-health calls, including the Mobile Crisis Rapid Response Team.

That team, a collaboration with St. Joseph’s Healthcare, has helped reduce the rate at which police take people in crisis to hospital from 75 per cent to 17 per cent, he noted.

Officers’ roles in mentalhealth crises have gone hand in hand with advocates’ calls to cut the police budget to channel tax dollars into social-service, health and housing programs.

Coun. Nrinder Nann said when Canadian municipalities face increases in policing costs, it hinders investment in “upstream prevention” efforts.

Girt said he’s “open to alternative solutions,” noting Hamilton’s multi-sector development of a provincially mandated community well-being plan.

On gun violence, Coun. Lloyd Ferguson asked whether the end of “street checks,” a controversial practice that critics say disproportionately targeted racialized people, had led to a spike in shootings, referring to the 51 incidents in 2020.

“Has this made it easier for the bad guys to carry guns now?” Ferguson asked, adding Girt needn’t give the “proper answer” privately once retired.

But Girt said his answer wouldn’t change: It’s hard to know without “hard data.”

Acting chief Frank Bergen said Project Strong, a “whole-of-service” effort to tackle gun violence between gangs, is ongoing. “We will continue to hunt down people who think it is a normal life activity to put other people at risk.”

Police CAO Anna Filice noted what was once a projected yearend surplus of roughly $567,000 in the late fall, had dwindled to about $3,000 after further number crunching. And that could still change, she said. “I do think we will be posting a bigger surplus.”

Council’s target to approve the city’s overall budget is March 31.