City tops province for number of police per capita

Windsor leads the province with the most police officers per capita in Southwestern Ontario, according to a new report from Statistics Canada.

According to the report, Windsor has 205 officers per 100,000 citizens. That compares to the next-closest municipality, St. Thomas, with 175.6.

The Windsor force employs about 500 sworn officers, 150 civilian staff and reports expenses close to $110 million in 2020. Expenses were offset by $17.4 million in revenue.

London has the fewest police officers per capita in southwestern Ontario. There were 590 officers serving a population of 414,959 in London last year, a ratio of 142.2 officers per 100,000 citizens, the national agency said this week in its annual report on police resources.

“It's good news for the taxpayers of London because they have an efficient, productive, low-cost police service,” said Sgt. Dave Gilmore, president of the London Police Association, a union that represents London's more than 800 officers and civilians.

Gilmore also cited a 2018 report from Municipal Benchmarking Network Canada that found London police had the second-lowest cost per capita to run a police force among 16 municipal governments.

London's officer-per-citizen ratio — one of the lowest in Ontario and well below the national rate of 183 — was significantly lower than Windsor, where 471 officers policed the border city of 229,787.

Other cities in the region had per-capita rates ranging from 146 in Sarnia to 175.6 in St. Thomas.

A spokesperson for the Windsor Police Service could not be reached for comment.

While the demand for policing continues to grow across the country — there were 13.5 million calls for service in Canada last year, a six per cent increase from the previous year — the rate of officers per 100,000 people fell one per cent from 2018, Statistics Canada said.

In London, police logged 107,198 calls for service last year, down from 118,563 a decade earlier, but the amount of time spent on an average call has increased to 2½ hours from two hours, according to the 2019 London police annual report.

Statistics Canada also highlighted how the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the workload for police officers.

“Again, that's another service that gets downloaded onto police,” Gilmore said. He has said the increasing workload is taking a toll on officers' well-being.