Soaring 2019 homicide rate pushing investigators’ overtime

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This article was published 14/06/2019 (2548 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg police Chief Danny Smyth describes the first six months of 2019 as “an unusually violent year.”

On Friday, Smyth told the Winnipeg Police Board that the city gets an average of about 22 homicides a year — a number it has already reached only halfway through this year.

In comparison, there were 22 in 2018 and 24 in 2017. The most in recent memory was 41 in 2011; the fewest was 12 in 1992.

Smyth had no explanation for what’s been driving the homicide rate this year.

“It’s people. Add alcohol and drugs, and people don’t get along sometimes,” he told reporters after the meeting. “Certain things you just can’t predict. You can’t predict how or when (homicide) is going to happen.”

The circumstances of the crimes are puzzling, Smyth said.

“What I’m seeing is not fitting past trends that I’ve become accustomed to,” the chief said. “In past years, you could almost predict a third of our murders would be domestic, a third of our murders would be gang-related — we’re not really seeing that this year.

“We’re seeing a lot of alcohol- and drug-fuelled disputes, some of them between strangers and many of them between people who know each other, and many have turned deadly.”

Smyth told the board only two of the 22 homicides this year are gang-related: the brazen early morning shooting at a Main Street restaurant in which two men shot and killed each other. One homicide is linked to a domestic situation; six appear to have been fuelled by drugs or alcohol.

With summer days away, Smyth said the city’s crime rate usually picks up.

The recent high number of homicides has increased police overtime, and there are concerns about the department’s budget.

While overall overtime for the WPS is down six per cent in the first quarter, compared with 2018, Smyth said the amount of OT linked to homicide investigations has totalled more than 9,200 hours — the equivalent of 4.3 full-time employees.

During Friday’s meeting, board members Edna Nabess and Brian Scharfstein said city police shouldn’t let cost control affect their work.

Nabess suggested the WPS should be given an “unlimited” budget to deal with crime.

“Public safety is certainly the absolute priority here and I would hope that as we move forward, we don’t look at this as overtime but we look at this as part of policing,” Scharfstein said.

Board chairman Coun. Kevin Klein (Charleswood—Tuxedo—Westwood) told reporters city council was cautioned earlier this year the WPS had been forced to allocate fewer dollars to overtime for 2019, strictly because of the financial constraints imposed by Mayor Brian Bowman and the executive policy committee.

“When the (police) budget was done, that was the No. 1 issue we talked about — the concern that we had to effectively cut back on overtime to meet the requirements the city had given the police service,” Klein said, adding the police board may face the possibility of having to go to council at the end of the year to ask for additional funds to cover overtime costs driven by homicide investigations.

“Our job is to advocate on behalf of the service and on behalf of the public. We recognize that we have to be fiscally responsible,” Klein said. “You can’t control what is going to happen, but we knew with the (meth) crisis we are facing, there is potential for more violence, potential for more overtime, and we identified it early.”

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca