Questioning safety in numbers

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WAYNE.GLOWACKI / Winnipeg Free Press Archives Mayor Sam Katz and Premier Greg Selinger sit in the Winnipeg Police Service's helicopter in December 2010 as Sgt. Dave Dalal closes the door. The helicopter is one of many expenditures related to an increasingly larger police force.

The staffing of the Winnipeg Police Service has never been larger and its budget is at a record amount, but two crime reports released last week question whether money or personnel have any impact on crime in the city.

Winnipeg earned the troubling titles of murder and violent crime capital of Canada following the release of the annual Statistics Canada report on national crime data and the 2011 Winnipeg Police Service annual report.

The year 2011 saw Winnipeg set new records for murder, nearly doubling the number of homicides the year before.

Winnipeg was found to be the community with the most violent crime.

Civic finance chairman Scott Fielding recognized the dilemma of spiralling police budget increases and the ability of police to do the job citizens expect of them back in January, likening the cost of policing to that of health care.

Between 2005 and 2012, the City of Winnipeg budget increased 26 per cent, while the Winnipeg Police Service budget increased 50 per cent, nearly double that rate.

"The Winnipeg police, like other police forces across Canada, have challenges with the cost of policing," Fielding said when he refused to elaborate on his health-care analogy.

Society needs health care but its costs spiral upward every year. Society also needs policing and in Winnipeg, those costs increase at a rate that outpaces all other civic expenses. The reports released last week show Winnipeg is not safer for the expense.

When Fielding took the civic budget to the floor of council in late March, he was pleased to say Winnipeg is putting more officers on the street but added there is a steep price tag attached.

"The police budget is the driving force of our (overall) budget," Fielding said. "We need to deliver (services) more effectively," and promised a review of the police budget sometime this year.

Fielding said safety and policing are the top concerns of Winnipeg residents and said people feel safer when they see more officers on the street, "catching criminals and fighting crime."

But the WPS 2011 annual report showed even with more officers, the clearance rate of crime has been relatively stable over the last few years.

And as for being a safer community, Statistics Canada said Winnipeg has become a more violent community.

"Most people are afraid of the anonymous stranger lurking in the alley waiting to jump out at the random person, (but) most violent crimes are perpetrated by someone the victim knows... spouses and former spouses, other family members, friends," said University of Manitoba criminologist Frank Cormier. "People choose to be with the people who will kill them or violently assault them, and more police officers will not prevent that."

Cormier said the public readily equates more police with safety and doubted any politician would challenge that belief with a reduction to the police service.

Chief Keith McCaskill boasted last week that there were fewer incidents of crime in Winnipeg in 2011 but Cormier said that no politician will say that justifies fewer police officers.

"It would be political suicide to say such a thing out loud," Cormier said. "People with ambitions and those who want to be re-elected know that putting more police on the streets and buying a cool helicopter will only help them, will be very popular."

Nationally, crime rates -- the actual number of offences being committed -- have been steadily decreasing for decades, even in Winnipeg. But last year, Winnipeg saw even with fewer crimes, the crime taking place is becoming more violent. Spending more on the police budget and putting more officers on the street, and in a helicopter in the sky, is having no effect.

"There is no correlation between the number of police officers per capita and crime rates. That would indicate to most intelligent people that simply getting more and more officers is not the answer," Cormier said.

When McCaskill released local crime stats last week, he said police are successful when government and non-government programs tackling root causes of crime are also successful.

Cormier said instead of expanding existing successful programs or introducing new ones, the provincial government has fuelled the growth of the WPS, providing the city with more officers and cadets and covering the operational cost of its new helicopter.

"Most people don't ask the question: For every dollar we spend putting more police on the street, where are we not spending that dollar? And we're not spending it on the big things that could actually, in the long term, decrease crime dramatically.

"If we're constantly being given more and more, we're not forced to look at using what we have more efficiently."

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 30, 2012 A4