Officers redeployed as London police face massive surge in demand – London | The Canadian News

Several police officers in London, Ontario, working on proactive initiatives are being reassigned to the front lines as the police service deals with a workload that the city police has described as “reaching a breaking point”.

Chief Steve Williams shared the news during Thursday’s meeting of the London Police Services Board (LPSB), the civil board charged with overseeing the police.

On a note to the LPSB shared before the meeting, Williams offered statistics that compared workload levels between January and October 2021 with the same time period in 2020.

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Officers spent an additional 33,000 hours in the 2021 period responding to roughly the same number of calls as in the 2020 period, according to Williams.

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“These additional hours are equivalent to the workload of an equivalent of 16 full-time employees,” their memo added.

He also noted that calls to Code 1, which relate to emergencies, life-threatening situations and ongoing serious crimes, have increased by 27 percent.

Meanwhile, Code 2 calls, which relate to urgent non-emergency calls, have seen a 96 percent increase in response time.

“In September 2021 alone, there was a 226% increase in Code 2 response time compared to September 2020,” the memo read.

In other statistics shared with the LPSB last month, Williams said the response times for Code 2 and Code 3 calls, which relate to non-emergency situations without an immediate threat to life or personal safety, now they are measured in days, not hours.

The increased demand has cost the police just over $ 450,000 in overtime, along with “60 occasions when the minimum staffing requirements set out in the collective agreement could not be met.”

Other impacts include officer fatigue and exhaustion, as well as damage to the morale and well-being of members.

Police have also seen repeated concern from the public regarding increased response times.

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A number of steps have been taken to address the problem and the one the public will most likely notice is the redeployment of agents.

The redeployments include eight school resource officers who are temporarily assigned to frontline patrol duties.

Eight officers have also been temporarily reassigned from “other operational areas”.

Elsewhere, 11 officers from the Community Oriented Response Unit (COR) have been reassigned to patrol duties, however that shift has been scheduled for an indefinite period of time.

The COR Unit functions as a team of officers assigned to different areas of the city. This team is then tasked with building relationships in these areas with the goal of addressing chronic neighborhood issues and analyzing localized trends.

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Williams says the loss of this unit means police will be “more reactive and less agile,” adding that he hopes the redeployment will be only temporary.

“There is no doubt that our response time was reducing, holding calls in the queue for days is not acceptable, but the trajectory we are on in relation to service demands could affect our ability to respond to emergencies in the community. “Williams told the board. Thursday.

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“These changes will help mitigate that risk.”

Williams says police are now reviewing how they handle calls for service, potentially diverting some to other agencies and checking whether others are worth responding to.

He adds that more staff is needed, which he hopes to achieve through a class attending Ontario Police College in January, along with increased funding from the City of London’s 2023 annual budget update for its multi-year budget.

“The City of London will get whatever police service it pays for, just like any municipal service,” Williams said.

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Vice President of the LPSB and Ward 4 Coun. Jesse Helmer rejected Williams’ long-term goal, telling the board that he “is not convinced that the solution is that we just need more money.”

Helmer emphasized the complexity of the problem, adding that although the police have added staff each year, the recent workload problem came up anyway.

“The boss is talking about ‘turning off the tap’, how to stop all these calls, the intensity of the calls, the severity of the calls. Is that really affected by the number of police officers there are? No, he is affected by all these non-police things, ”Helmer said.

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“I’m not saying that increases in resources are not reasonable or necessary, but I don’t think it’s as simple as saying that we just need more… how do we change the overall response? How do we do things before problems to avoid them? “

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The board voted to receive Williams’ memorandum, but no decision was made on whether requests for funding to alleviate the workload will be made in the future.

The city is currently participating in budget talks for the 2022 annual update of its multi-year budget, which covers spending between 2020 and 2023.

If a request for funding were made through the assessment growth, it would not be revealed until the end of next year when the city prepares its annual budget update for 2023.


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