Compared to the shambles of the American election, it may be chump change to complain that our police service behaves as though administrative rules and procedures applying to everyone else do not apply to it, but it does matter.
The most prominent recent example of what the police department gets away with, and what the Toronto Police Services Board endorses, is the processing of the 2017 operating budget. Budget papers were presented to the Oct. 20 meeting of the board, but they were not part of the regular agenda. Instead, they were presented as “walk-on” items, released only a day or two before the meeting. Normal practice is that walk-on items are unanticipated matters of urgency that have arisen since public notification of the agenda.
The 2017 budget was obviously not an unanticipated matter of urgency. The budget papers submitted by staff say police will spend $1.002 billion in 2017. The board patted itself on the back saying it was $2 million less than last year and was the first time in decades there was a decrease in expenditure.
But the budget papers give no idea of exactly how the money will be spent, and clearly that’s what budgets are supposed to be about.
The 400-page line-by-line budget released by staff is misleading: it shows spending for 2016 and 2017 almost exactly the same even though the budget documents and board decisions indicate lots of change ahead. For instance, the board has said that the number of uniformed officers will decrease by about 150 in each of 2017, 2018 and 2019. That’s not reflected in the line-by-line budget. Will it be spread among all 17 divisions, cutting about nine officers from each station? Or will some function be cut? The police are not saying.
Civilians will be cut by about 10 per cent — in the order of 175 employees — but no information is given about where this will occur. The recruitment division has more than 40 staff. If no new officers will be hired in the next three years, surely staff in this division can be reduced, although there’s no hint of that in the line-by-line budget. The police practice of carding — mostly stopping and questioning young black men — has been virtually ended by provincial regulation, yet no staff savings are projected, just as no budget change is proposed now that the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy has ended.
Quite simply, there is no budget for the police. The board approved the requested $1.002 billion for 2017 with hardly a murmur of debate.
Not providing a budget has become standard practice for the police service and the board. Last year, the service had the gall to provide a mere six pages in support of its $1.004 billion budget. (The detail on money spent on uniformed officers was short and sweet: $531.2 million, period, end of story.)
The year before that, the chief’s report on how police planned to spend money contradicted what the budget papers provided.
The result is that the public does not know how money was spent last year or how it will be spent in the future.
Toronto City Council told every department to cut their budgets by 2.6 per cent. Departments complained but complied. The TTC says fares must be raised and 15 bus routes cut back to meet the council direction; the library board says local branches will be closed two or three evenings a week. The police department simply scoffed at the request.
Mayor John Tory, who sits on the Toronto Police Services Board, apparently hasn’t got the backbone to require the police to follow the same directives.
But sooner or later (maybe this January?) council will have to call the bluff on the police department and the police board. How else can one expect serious change?
The simple solution is to tell the police department it will be restricted to a budget of $978.6 million, which is 2.6 per cent less than last year, just like every other civic service.
