Police board asks province to help rein in officer pay costs

Obscenely high and unsustainable policing costs. OPP bills are destroying communities its officers are supposed to protect. Apparent self-interest is cloaked in the guise of public safety needs. Where is the political outrage while OPP costs continue to climb? Who is going to bring policing costs in this province under control?

Police board asks province to help rein in officer pay costs

Postby Thomas » Mon Oct 22, 2012 2:36 pm

Ottawa police board asks province to help rein in officer pay costs

OTTAWA — Police officers’ salaries will again take centre stage on Monday when the body that oversees Ottawa’s police force will debate a motion calling on the premier to do his part to keep costs down.

The cost of paying officers is intricately connected among municipalities in Ontario, even though many towns and cities are like Ottawa in that they operate their own, independent police services. Others contract with the Ontario Provincial Police for law enforcement.

Municipalities believe that if police are paid handsomely in one part of the province, officers elsewhere will demand similar compensation or threaten to move to areas where they can make more.

That’s why the Ottawa Police Services Board plans to discuss a proposal to send a letter to Premier Dalton McGuinty dealing with the matter. It would call on him to exercise “fiscal restraint” in the province’s negotiations with OPP officers for a new contract.

The OPP deal expires in 2014. However it’s already guaranteed that they will be the highest-paid officers in the province when that time rolls around.

The Ontario Provincial Police Association, which represents officers in the negotiations, accepted a pay freeze for 2012 and 2013 in exchange for the government agreeing to make the highest-paid jurisdiction in the province the minimum for what they will make in 2014.

Any significant hike in their pay would be felt close to home, said Eli El-Chantiry, an Ottawa city councillor and member of the police board, since any accompanying raise for local officers would have to come out of the city’s budget.

“We value their service, they’re great people, they do great jobs ... but it doesn’t mean we can’t restrain the cost and justify what the average people have to deal with,” said El-Chantiry.

The union that represents Ottawa officers said it’s important to take into account the increased workload for police when considering pay raise issues. Officers now do more work in an hour of time on the job today than they would do during than hour in previous years, said Matt Skof, president of the Ottawa Police Association.

The increase in “expectations on police, especially in the last couple of decades, has been exponential,” he said.

He cited the extra work officers put in to convict accused criminals in the courts while continuing to balance other responsibilities as an example. Going to court to convict a drunk driver takes eight hours now instead of the one hour it took 20 years ago, he said.

A similar debate is going on in municipalities around the province. A provincewide umbrella organization, the Ontario Association of Police Boards, is asking all boards to write a similar letter.

The association hopes to capitalize on recent remarks by McGuinty that called on municipalities to reduce their costs of paying police. He wanted them to consider eliminating the power officers have in some areas — not including Ottawa — to take allotted sick days that haven’t been used in one year and carry them over to the next.

It applauded the premier’s effort but wanted him to further rein in costs by taking a tough line in the OPP negotiations.

Calls to McGuinty’s office on Thursday afternoon were not returned.

The motion calls for also sending the letter to the leaders of the two other parties at Queen’s Park, the NDP’s Andrea Horwath and the Progressive Conservatives’ Tim Hudak.

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