More officers needed to keep up with demand, police chief says in ask for more cash

There's too much work and not enough police officers to do it.

That's the message Waterloo Regional Police Service Chief Bryan Larkin had for the police services board on Wednesday morning as he presented a draft version of his proposed 2022 budget.

"What I'm really focused on is workload and call management, but it's also around the wellness of our members, said Larkin." 

"We're in the people business and our members are working extremely hard and I'm concerned that if we don't continue to provide some form of investment, we're going to have to do business differently, cease doing certain things," Larkin said.

"We simply cannot keep up with the volume," he said. "Our members are just … they're stretched and so something needs to give."

The draft budget offered the police services board five scenarios for the 2022 budget. Four of them included hiring new officers (starting at 25 in the first scenario and up to 55 in the fourth). The fifth scenario kept the service at its current staffing levels.

Going with the fifth scenario, the smallest budget increase, would still involve an increase by seven per cent compared to the 2021 budget, or by about $13 million.

The Region of Waterloo has indicated to regional staff it wants to keep next year's budget to between a two to three per cent increase.

Kirsten Hand, the police service's director of finance and assets, said to keep the police service within that budget increase, it would mean cutting 37 officer positions.

Larkin's presentation to the board showed that of the 12 largest police services in the province, the WRPS is below the median number of officers, which was 144 across all 12 police services. WRPS is at 131 officers per 100,000 people.

He added that crime severity is up, as are violent crimes, while officers have not been able to clear out cases at the rate of other police services.

Police board member Karin Schnarr, who is an associate professor of police and law at Wilfrid Laurier University, noted of those 12 police services, there were situations where police services with fewer officers were able to clear more cases.

"I look at Halton and Halton is one where proportionally has a lower number [of officers], lower than our region, and yet I think was the area that had the highest clearance. So I wasn't really sure I buy all of the other information. I'm not sure some of the takeaways from the presentation related to the statistics that we had," she said.

Woolwich Mayor Sandy Shantz also asked Larkin about calls in the community to defund police and reallocate that money to other programs such as crime prevention, mental health supports and housing.