Police ask for $25M boost to $1.1 billion

More than a year after calls to defund the police echoed across the city and throughout North America, the Toronto Police Service is asking for a budget increase of nearly $25 million for 2022, bringing the total cost of policing to $1.1 billion.

In a budget request released Tuesday, Toronto police Chief James Ramer said the 2.3 per cent increase over the 2021 budget was largely due to collective agreement obligations. According to a breakdown of the requested budget, salaries and benefits for the force’s 7,400 employees account for 88 per cent of the requested operating budget, including “premium pay,” or compensation for overtime.

In a report to the Toronto police board in advance of a budget meeting next week, Ramer called the request “a modest investment” he said was necessary to maintain policing services in a growing city that’s seen a high rate of gun violence and a 20 per cent increase in homicides last year.

The service would still make investments in “key priorities” in 2022 through the reallocation of existing resources, Ramer said. That includes upping the number of neighbourhood community officers, increasing resources for the hate crime unit after a 50 per cent spike in cases in 2020, and creating a dedicated team to provide “a targeted response” to emerging crime trends.

The civilian Toronto police board, which includes Mayor John Tory, will consider Ramer’s request at a special budget meeting on Jan. 10. If approved by the board, the proposed request will then go to city council, where the cost of policing has for years been the city’s single biggest expense. In 2020, following continentwide protests over policing and race and widespread calls to defund the police, Couns. Josh Matlow and Kristyn Wong-Tam moved a motion to cut the 2021 police budget by at least 10 per cent. The move was rejected by council.

Ramer’s report noted that the force has requested a 0 per cent budget increase in three of the last five years and found savings in a staffing reduction since 2010.

Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, a University of Toronto criminologist who researches policing and race, said a request to increase the police budget must come with greater public disclosure about how it’s going to be spent. That would include a detailed accounting of how an officer spends their time, he said, and allow for more informed public debate.

“What are the police spending our money on, and what are the officers doing with their time?” OwusuBempah said. “The public deserves at least that.”