Should the money be going elsewhere?
Now that the municipal elections are over, one of the main issues to be addressed is what to do regarding the huge $857 million deficit in Toronto. While a lot of the deficit can be attributed to the COVID-pandemic costs, it is important to think about how the mayor will attempt to balance the budget. Will they increase taxes? Will they cut services?
Perhaps one of the ways to balance the budget lies in reduction of money going towards police services in Toronto. When CBC Toronto asked Torontonians what their concerns were regarding the 24 October 2022 election, one of the main issues brought up was the police budget. On 4 January 2022, the Toronto Police Service (TPS) released its operating budget request which was a 2.3% increase over last year’s budget–a total budget of $1.1 billion. This increase amounted to $24.8 million compared to 2021. Many argue that this money should be put elsewhere, like social programs, housing, and other social services. Many others are concerned about TPS getting so much funding when their services are arguably inadequate.
In a June 2022 study by the Auditor General of Toronto, it was found that response times are increasing. Response times are used as a metric by TPS to evaluate their performance, and by this metric, their performance is poor. Response time is the difference in time between when the call taker sends the call for service to a TPS dispatcher so that an officer can be assigned to the event, and when the first unit arrives on scene. TPS has not been meeting their response time targets: in 2019, 72% of priority one calls (which are the most urgent calls) took longer than six minutes; 92% of priority two calls took longer than six minutes, and 96% of priority three calls took longer than six minutes. From 2017–2019, the average response time increased from 19% and 17%, respectively, for priority one and two calls for service. The study also shows that priority four to six call targets are also failing to be met.
The study claims that there are a variety of causes for this increase in response time, the prominent reason being the lack of availability of primary response unit (PRU) officers. The study finds that PRU officers are sometimes unavailable due to accommodation or disability and that 21% of PRU constables were not deployable in April 2022. The study suggests that TPS should fix the deployable staffing issues to address response time targets.
It is not only response times that are increasing, but also clearance times. This is the difference in time between when officers arrive at scene and when they can be dispatched to a new call for service. In other words, clearance time is the time in which one resolves the service call and completes their investigation. From 2017–2019, clearance times increased 15% on average. For priority five and six calls, they increased 41% and 46%, respectively. This delay means that other individuals who are waiting for service continue to wait for a longer response from police, and this can sometimes be a life-or-death situation.
With TPS being heavily funded, it is easy to question where exactly this money is going when they are failing to even respond to police calls. In fact, in 2019, the Toronto Star reported that Toronto police tickets fell to a new low in 2019. Police laid 200,000 provincial offences tickets in 2019, compared to 2010, when 700,000 charges were laid. This was despite the fact that the Toronto police board reinstated the traffic squad in 2019. Understandably, some initiatives like red-light cameras have reduced the number of tickets that police give out, but with the traffic squad, we still cannot reach numbers even slightly close to what we had in 2010. Some argue that the problem does not necessarily lie in the amount we are budgeting for the police, but rather the fact that the police services seem to be ineffective, and this money seems to just be “vanishing.” Some question the police budget, where we can see arguably unreasonable expenses such as $124,000 spent on book and magazine subscriptions for Toronto Police in 2020.
Perhaps this money should be diverted to other initiatives where it could play a more beneficial role. In fact, the study finds that a more “whole-of-government” approach is needed. We need increased social services support, improved housing, more spending on mental health, and other alterative response models. However, John Tory has made clear that he does not plan to reduce police spending.
In the view of the Auditor General, “a simple transfer of budget from TPS to the City to fund alternative non-police responses is not currently possible and would very likely not be enough.” Yet, they confirm that substantial investment in sustainable social service infrastructure is needed to promote better outcomes for the community. With a $857 million dollar gap, coming up with a substantial investment for these other services will be difficult, especially with a continuously growing police budget.