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KPMG report: New HQ, more analytics staff would boost police

Review gives Sudbury police high marks for efficiency, effectiveness
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Greater Sudbury Police came off well in KPMG's review of the force's efficiency and effectiveness, members of the Greater Sudbury Police Services Board heard Wednesday. File photo

Greater Sudbury Police came off well in KPMG's review of the force's efficiency and effectiveness, members of the Greater Sudbury Police Services Board heard Wednesday.

But KPMG made several recommendations on how police can improve, particularly in three areas: improving resources dedicated to crime analytics, to ensure police are deployed where and when they're needed most; breaking down silos on the force, in particular in criminal investigations, which the report said was too reliant on specialized units more appropriate for cities the size of Toronto; and by moving to a new building more appropriate for policing.

Bruce Peever, KPMG's director of public sector practice, said like professional sports teams, police forces are making use of advanced statistics to help predict where and when crimes are likely to occur. 

"That's why you're seeing more and more civilians joining the police service, because it's a different skill set than a normal sworn officer will provide," Peever said. 

"If you think of the city, and where you place the police officers in response to where you predict the crimes (will take place) impacts the response time," said Oscar Poloni, who heads up KPMG's northern office. "You can say when do I need more officers and when do I need less, and where do I need them?"

What's holding the force back, Peever said, is demand for analysts is outstripping supply.

"It's a growing field and there's not a lot of data analytic people available,” he said. “Everyone is looking for crime analysts right now."

The entire review cost $125,000 and took 10 months to complete. Poloni said Wednesday that police do a good job “under very challenging circumstances.

“This is a big place with a lot of territory that needs to be covered,” Poloni said.

Peever said while Sudbury police is “certainly a leading police service in the province," there are ways they could become more efficient. For example, he said there's too much specialization in the criminal investigation division.

"There are specific investigative units within the CID and we just felt that there might be an opportunity for the police service to improve its efficiency through pooling out investigations," he said.

"It's almost a question of critical mass,” Poloni added. “If you have specializations that have high volumes, then you can justify having that in places. And that's typically in larger centres. In smaller centres like ours, what we've found is from an efficiency perspective, in a resource allocation perspective, if you somehow get more consolidation and grouping, you actually get a bigger bang for your buck."

Peever said the building is also inadequate for a modern police force. 

For example, the elevator used to bring reporters to Wednesday's meeting is also used to transport suspects. There's multiple entrances in the building, when a secure police facility would only have one available to the public.

"We felt that causes a concern for the police service, in terms of monitoring who is in the building and who is not in the building,” he said. “The weight room currently is above the CID office. So whenever officers pound the weights, the CID officers can't do their work. It certainly, we felt, is an area that needs to be reviewed."

Police Chief Paul Pedersen welcomed the report and the recommendations to “fine tune elements of an already effective and efficient organization.”

"We'll be looking at that from top to bottom of our organization to become even more efficient than we already are," Pedersen said. 

When asked about the need to “break down silos” and reduce the specialization in CID, he said the recommendations were more about getting the units to share information and resources.

"When we talk about silos ... every organization has different branches -- a human resources branch, a finance branch, different departments, and ours is not unlike that,” he said. 

“What the report recommendations are talking about are not so much breaking them down, but having them work with cross-functionality. How does a break, enter and robbery unit work well with a drug unit so they are not always working at cross purposes ... but instead are sharing resources to be most effective?"

And Pedersen said more resources for analytics staffing would be a boost.

"Those are areas that, by virtue of police budgets ... we haven't been able to staff business analytics and crime analytics sufficiently,” he said. “And with an investment, we can see some improvements in efficiency."