Greater Sudbury Police Services board passed its 2018 budget Monday, which calls for a 3.9 per cent increase, bring the force's budget to $57,763,721.
Of the total increase, 0.9 per cent is to help fund a large renovation or replacement of the current police headquarters, a project in the planning for several years.
Police Chief Paul Pedersen said staff has worked diligently to keep the budget as low as possible, pointing out that the police budget as a percentage of city tax dollars has remained stable for the last two years at 22 per cent.
“I've seen it as high as 33 per cent” in other cities, he said. “But this is a zero growth budget. This is just paying our staff and the gas and the lights.”
With 85 per cent of the budget devoted to salaries, there's little wiggle room to cut costs. The force hasn't added any new officers in several years, and replaced some positions by hiring community safety personnel. Those are staffers who take over responsibilities traditionally handled by police, but aren't core policing functions. They make less than officers, and they have saved more than $300,000 on the budget.
“This is my fourth budget and we haven't added a single officer in that time,” he said.
But the austerity has come at a cost, Pedersen said. They normally have 60-70 calls “in the queue” -- non-emergency calls for service that don't require an immediate response and are dealt with much more slowly.
“We're really good with 911 calls,” Pedersen said. “But that's all we can afford.”
While crime rates – particularly violent crime – have declined, demands on police time have increased and the nature of some crime is changing and becoming more complex.
For example, cyber crime is a much bigger part of police work, with identity theft and scams crossing borders but affecting people locally. Investigating those incidents requires a constantly changing response from police. Social media also presents a brand new challenge.
“When you look at bullying now, not that long ago, bullying was contained within a school yard,” he said. “That's not the case now.”
Sexting is “completely new in this generation,” and combating child pornography is a huge problem online.
Police have saved money through initiatives such as the collision reporting centre, which dealt with 1,622 motor vehicle collisions last year, each of which would have required police time otherwise. Use of the police online crime reporting tool is also increasing, rising 59 per cent last year.
“This frees up our officer's time for other services the public expects,” he said.
Of all the calls they receive, 15 per cent of calls are for crimes, 85 per cent are for something else. And one call can be easy to deal with, or require hours and hours of police time. For example, when a missing persons call comes in, they have to treat it as potential foul play, rather than assume it's a runaway or someone who is lost.
“We have to investigate (expecting) the worst,” he said.
It takes hours and hours of staff time to deal with, but is recorded as a single call.
As for funding a new headquarters, Pedersen said it has long been a pressing issue that can't be ignored, since it's becoming a health and safety issue.
If anyone at city council thinks the situation “has miraculously gotten better,” that's not the case, he said.
Board member Angela Recollet said she has seen first-hand the state of the headquarters and it needs to be addressed.
“I know the health and safety risks in this building,” Recollet said. “I'm fully and completely supporting this.”
Ward 3 Coun. Gerry Montpellier said the issue of online crime is a particular challenge, requiring complex and time consuming investigations.
“The public doesn't realize how big an issue Cybercrime is,” Montpellier said.
It's growing, Pedersen said, with criminals gathering personal information online and using it to do things like apply for fraudulent loans.
“It isn't going to steal from a bank anymore,” he said.
While approved by the board, the police budget doesn't become official until it's approved by the finance committee on Tuesday.
