Editorial: Policing in small towns

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?

Editorial: Policing in small towns

Postby Thomas » Mon Mar 31, 2014 3:01 pm

Outgoing OPP Commissioner Chris Lewis can’t be accused of empire building when he says the era of small town police forces is nearing an end.

If the OPP adds a few more detachments in the coming years, it won’t be on Lewis’s watch. He retired March 28.

“This is not about the OPP trying to take over more turf,” Lewis told faculty at Algonquin College in a speech on the qualities of leadership. “The reality is small municipalities just can’t afford the cost of policing anymore.”

You don’t have to look far to see that’s true.

Lewis says the OPP provides policing at an average cost of $350 per household. A large municipal police force like Ottawa’s costs about $550 per household.

If you live in Smiths Falls, however, you’re paying more than a $1,000 a year to support the 25-officer Smiths Falls Police.

Clearly, it costs a lot to have your town’s name on the side of a police cruiser.

Smiths Falls is one of the few remaining municipal forces in Eastern Ontario. Perth and Pembroke disbanded their police forces last year — each of them closing the book on more than 100 years of proud policing history — in favour of contract policing from the OPP. Pembroke figures the move will save the city $2 million over three years. In Perth, the saving was estimated at $750,000 a year.

Fears that moving to the OPP means residents will only see police once in a blue moon, or that officers won’t know the town like your local cops did, are unfounded. In most cases, it will be the same officers on patrol, they’ll just be in different uniforms. And the policing contracts stipulate a minimum level of service. A year into Perth’s switch to the OPP, Deputy mayor John Gemmell, who also sits on the Perth Police Services Board, says the transition has been smooth.

There are issues of fairness as well. When there’s a murder, a hostage standoff, a public emergency in your little town, who ya gonna call?

Why, the OPP, of course. The provincial force has the forensic labs, tactical teams, K9 units and other resources that a small-town force simply can’t afford. It provides those services for free, for the most part, though discussions of “cost recovery” methods are always underway. It hardly seems fair for a town to get free service — or rather service subsidized by the rest of the province — when its own tiny force can’t do the job.

Lewis makes no promise that a regional police force or the OPP can provide better service than a small town department. But while bigger might not be better, it needn’t be worse and it is certainly cheaper.

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