Constable Gavin Jansz from 31 Division, coaching the boy's basketball team at James Cardinal McGuigan High School.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
When the final budget of David Miller's reign lands with a $9.2-billion thud at city council this week, there probably won't be a peep about the document's single most expensive item: The $888.1-million police budget.
Slamming police spending has always been politically risky, even during dysfunctional periods in the Toronto force's past.
This is not one of those periods. Crime is down, Chief William Blair is highly respected and the police board is stable. What councillor wants to criticize Toronto police right now?
Trouble is, the force's recent success hasn't come cheap. The police budget has risen by nearly a third since Mr. Miller took office, up 31 per cent from $679-million in 2004.
Arresting that increase would be a Herculean task. Salaries make up nearly 90 per cent of the police budget, and provincial arbitrators often seal collective agreements the municipal government can't afford, as happened last year when officers were awarded a 10-per-cent pay raise over three years.
Because tackling non-salary costs won't solve the case, critics of Toronto police spending say it's time to ask tough questions about whether the number of officers and civilians can be slashed, police services reduced or fiercely guarded perks stripped from future contracts.
Calm on the law-enforcement front and a looming civic election make now a perfect moment for such a big-picture review, they say.
"It's so essential for our city," said David Soknacki, budget chief in Mr. Miller's first term. "It's not that there's a problem with the police - which is why it's possible to do a strategic review right now."
Mariana Valverde, the director of the University of Toronto's Centre of Criminology, said the next mayor should hire an external consultant to scrutinize the budget and recommend cuts. "There are all kinds of places in the U.S. that are taking on their policing costs," she said. "I think that's got to come to Toronto and the election is a great time for it."
Some members of the police services board bristle at the suggestion Toronto police aren't reviewing every budget line or counting every penny, especially this year.
The board initially approved a budget that was 4.8-per-cent larger than 2009; it later whittled that increase down to 4.4 per cent. No good, said the city manager and budget chief, forcing Mr. Blair to find an additional $4.1-million in savings for which he's still searching. It's likely Toronto police will reduce two recruit classes later this year, he has said. The April class has already been cancelled to save cash.
"The problem with this budget is pretty clear. It's not very complicated," said Councillor Pam McConnell, a long-time police board member. "A 4.4-per-cent increase is the increase in the salary lines of police officers, arbitrated by the provincial arbitrator, objected to by our board."
In the end, police only got a 3.9-per-cent boost in the budget that goes to council Thursday. "We didn't even get what the provincial arbitrator decreed in our budget," Ms. McConnell said.
Still, other police forces in North America do business differently and save money in the process. Torontonians pay more for their municipal police force than any other big city in Canada, the equivalent of $348 per capita, according to a 2009 Statistics Canada report. That doesn't necessarily buy us more officers - Montreal has 241 cops for every 100,000 people, Vancouver has 230 and both cities boast lower per capita costs than Toronto, which has 212 officers per 100,000 population. (John Turner, a Statistics Canada analyst, cautioned that per capita costs can be misleading because different forces carry different costs. Toronto, for example, pays $45-million a year for court security, a cost borne by the province outside Ontario.)
Vancouver and Montreal are also battling more major crime than Toronto of late. Statistics Canada's new crime severity index - which assigns a heavier weight to murders than mischief for a more accurate picture of crime in a city - assigns Toronto a score of 81.5, much lower than Vancouver's 141.3 or Montreal's 112.6.
Given all this, could Toronto police look at the following areas for savings?
MOUNTED UNIT
Toronto is one of the few forces in Canada with a large, working equine unit, with 42 officers, one civilian and 28 horses. The unit's 2010 budget is $4.5-million, $4.2-million of which is salaries.
Other police departments with horses tend to have fewer: Calgary's mounted unit is four officers and five or six horses and Vancouver has seven officers and nine horses, for instance.
Eliminating the mounted unit is "one avenue that could be explored if you're looking for efficiencies," said Mariana Valverde, director of the University of Toronto's Centre of Criminology, whose research has found that several U.S. police services rent horses for special events. But Toronto police say officers on horseback are a huge asset. "They are very, very effective in terms of public order," said Tony Veneziano, Toronto police's chief administrative officer, highlighting the mounted unit's role in subduing Tamil protesters last year.
OFFICERS IN SCHOOLS AND THE TTC
Toronto police have recently expanded their regular patrols in two places: Schools and the subway system. Last September, Toronto police expanded the school resource officer program, assigning armed, uniformed officers to 50 schools, up from 30 in the scheme's inaugural year.
Meanwhile, 80 officers will be patrolling the TTC by the end of this year, up from the current 38 thanks to a five-year federal grant. The city provided an extra $1.8-million in this year's budget for the 42 officers, part of a plan to shift responsibility for TTC security from special constables to Toronto police. Trouble is, TTC and police have yet to agree on how police can absorb the special constables, whose numbers will be reduced by attrition, but not by much. The TTC could wind up over-policed. Both programs enjoy strong support from Chief Bill Blair, but budget cutters looking to reduce the total numbers of police officers could start here.
PARKING ENFORCEMENT
Critics of police spending often ask: Why does Toronto pay police officers to hand out parking tickets?
Technically, it doesn't. While the parking enforcement unit is run by Toronto police, the unit's members aren't sworn officers, don't carry weapons and make much less than full-fledged cops. (About $57,000 a year at top rate, compared to about $80,000 for a first-class constable.) Furthermore, the unit's $40-million budget is part of the city's parking tag enforcement and operations budget, not the police budget.
But that doesn't absolve police from seeking savings. For example, parking enforcement officers are automatically paid time-and-a-half when they appear in parking ticket court. "We don't want them to attend court while they're on duty because then they wouldn't be issuing [parking tickets] said Angelo Cristofaro, Toronto police's director of finance and administration.
OVERTIME
Toronto police were criticized last month when they revealed 1,328 uniform officers and civilian staff earned more than $100,000, a more than 30-per-cent increase from 2008, when 1,006 employees made the cut.
Although police spokesman Mark Pugash points out base salaries are creeping closer to six figures - a first-class constable makes about $80,000 - many officers made the sunshine list with overtime or, as the police call it, premium pay.
The most controversial part of the premium pay budget - $42.8-million in 2010 - is for court time. Officers testifying at criminal court are paid time-and-a-half on scheduled days off. As well, since 2006 officers testify at traffic court when they're off duty, meaning they're automatically paid time-and-a-half for a minimum of three hours, four if it's a scheduled day off. The objective, police say, is to increase the likelihood of convictions.
RETENTION PAY
Retention pay was negotiated into the Toronto police contract in 2002, when the force was losing experienced officers. In Toronto, eight to 16 years experience earns 3 per cent in retention pay, 17 to 22 nets 6 per cent and 23 years or more garners 9 per cent. This retention pay formula is now common across most of Ontario, said Charles Momy, president of the Canadian Police Association. Out West, police forces opt for incremental pay increases for post-secondary education. "It's almost like teachers," Mr. Momy said. Vancouver police officers, for example, can increase their pay by 5 per cent when they reach 10, 15 and 20 years service - so long as they complete five college, university or training courses and pass an exam.
In Toronto, retaining cops is no longer a problem, but the police board sparked labour unrest when it tried - and ultimately failed - to take away retention pay in 2005.
TWO-OFFICER PATROLS
Between 7 p.m. and 3 a.m., all Toronto police patrol cars carry two officers. It's the norm in most cases during the day, too, with exceptions for units such as traffic services. The two-officer practice is more than policy: It was actually written into the police collective agreement in the 1970s. "We were required to double the number of officers in a car," said Councillor Pam McConnell, a veteran police board member. "These are all labour-arbitrated decisions."
Other forces have more flexibility when it comes to two-officer patrols. "Our standard procedure is to have in every unit a single officer," said Constable J.P. Valade, a spokesman for neighbouring Peel police who said there are cases when two officers are dispatched. In Vancouver, it's roughly 80 per cent two-officer units and in Calgary it varies depending on the situation and part of town.