Police association calls for more boots on the ground
Board chair says 16 front-line officers already added
The Niagara Regional Police Association is calling for more front-line officers to keep Niagara safe.
Increased responsibilities and a growing population are stretching resources thin.
Recent high-profile gun incidents highlight the pressure the service finds itself under, said a letter to the editor from the association, which represents the NRP’s rank and file.
“I’m not saying our numbers don’t provide safe policing,” said Cliff Priest, president of the association. “And I’m not saying it is a crisis, but the situation we have puts constant stress on the frontline officers.”
Priest said while Niagara’s population is growing and home construction is booming, the
NRP roster has been, for the most part, stagnant.
There are more than 700 sworn officers to cover Niagara’s 1,400 square kilometres and serve almost 450,000 residents 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
“The population is expanding across the Region, and that brings more calls for service,” Priest said. “A lot of the calls involve addiction and mental health. Unfortunately, they tie up our personnel, who have to wait for the patients to be released or admitted.
“We also have more specialized units like child abuse and internet child luring. They are staffed to the lowest number possible too, but we had to take officers off the front line and they haven’t been replaced. That’s results in overtime to fill the gaps.
“You end up burning out your officers when they are constantly bouncing from call to call to call because there aren’t enough resources.”
Priest said police investigations are also more complex and take more time. Officers used to be back on the road 30 to 45 minutes after a simple impaired driving arrest. The time has tripled with increased for paperwork mandated by the province and the court system.
“I know a lot of it is beyond the control of the chief and the police services board,” Priest said. “We understand that. The chief was able to persuade the board to give us eight extra officers, and we commend them for that, but we work a four-shift system across
seven districts. The eight officers add up to about one per area, and we need more than that.”
Police Services Board Chair Bob Gale said the the board provided Chief Bryan MacCulloch and the service with an increase of 16 front-line officers this year.
“If our chief needs more officers than the eight we hired — and the further eight repositioned on the road from the front desk — he will ask us,” Gale said.
“That’s what he did last year, and that’s what we gave him.”
Gale, a Niagara Falls Regional Councillor, said the letter was another example of election-year politicking. He said a first-class constable with benefits costs $127,000 a year. Adding just four costs taxpayers $500,000.
“The money doesn’t grow on trees, and I believe the public is pretty satisfied with the police presence right now,” Gale said.