Sustainability of policing an issue facing chiefs at provincial conference

Police budgets and sustainability are the big focus of next week’s Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police conference taking place in Peterborough next week.

About 200 police chiefs and senior administration officers are arriving in the city this weekend to take part in the four-day event.

City police and OACP officials held a press conference late Friday morning to talk about the upcoming event.

The sustainability of policing is the big issue, city police Chief Murray Rodd said, and a big discussion.

The criminal justice system has imposed great expectations on police, he said, and the techniques and procedures used to collect evidence are expensive.

Police are being asked also increasingly to respond to a wide array of calls.

Anything police don’t do, any calls they don’t respond or issues they stop dealing with will have to be picked up by someone else, he said.

“It’s a major discussion and police are only a part of the conversation,” Rodd said, adding that people in the health care and social services sectors should be a part of it.

Ron Bain, executive director of OACP, said the conference features speakers from the United States and the United Kingdom, countries that have made major changes to their policing models.

Their talks will

focus on

the positive outcomes of those changes, he said, as well as the setbacks they’ve experienced.

The conference begins Sunday with an ice-breaker event in the evening. Opening ceremonies take place Monday morning.