RCMP Ask for Staff Increase
Prince George, B.C.- The first of two days of budget talks for Prince George City Council will start today at 3:30 and is based on a 3% increase in the levy. But that could go higher as the Prince George Detachment of the RCMP is asking for a service enhancement.The contract for the local detachment allows for a maximum of 135 members. The detachment budgets for 121, but because of temporary leaves, has never reached that target and is not allowed to fill those temporary vacancies. As a result, overtime is mounting as a reduced number of officers handle increased numbers of files. Overtime in 2014 amounted to more than $1.4 million dollars.
In addition to temporary leaves, resources have been used to focus attention on a number of specific issues, such as the Downtown Safety Unit, the Car 60 unit and the Domestic Violence unit.
The detachment is asking that the contract be revised to allow for a maximum of 143 members, and the budget be boosted to fund an extra 7 officers over the next three years. In the report to Council, the RCMP request budget increases to fund three more officers in 2016 and two in each of the following two years.
The increase in officers for 2016 would cost the City an extra $481,369.00 and by the time all seven were on board by 2018, the estimated annual budget increase would be $1.123 million. The report to Council states; “Failure to maintain adequate policing resources and an appropriate police to population ration in the future could negatively impact service deliver, place increased risks to public and officer safety and adversely affect to community’s perception of public safety.”
Without the enhancement, the Police services proposed budget is just over $23 million.
There is also a request to hire a second Data Processor for the Detachment. The person in this position is responsible for building and linking a number of reports and documents and converting them to electronic formats for Crown Counsel. Senior Management at the RCMP detachment have identified this second position as a priority to ensure Crown’s requests on disclosure are met. Adding this position would add a further $73,365.00 to the detachment’s budget.
The budget session will start at 3:30 this afternoon with input from the public. Following an overview of the City’s revenue and expenditures, and the community consultation process leading up to the budget presentation, Police services will be the first item up for discussion.
Comments
HMMMM, can’t ever remember a department asking for less people.
Hmmmm, NO….ACSC…
“an appropriate police to population ratio.”
Can we please deal with that little matter of several years of a reduced city population. The last census was the first one over at least two pervious censi which showed population decline.
Please give a better rationale based on actual functions and inability to accomplish them with current staffing levels as well as consequences in a more tangible fashion.
Crime rates keep falling. As is the population. But we keep needing more police…. maybe a little empire building ?
If they can guarantee that the 1.4 million spent on overtime will decrease significantly, I’m all for hiring some more cops.
Its actually cheaper to pay someone overtime than hire a new employee. Cost of benefits stay the same, along with retirement etc.. with a new employee, industry standard used to be that each employee costs about twice their wage, not sure if it still is but guessing it hasnt changed much.
The bad thing about so much overtime is over worked leads to being tired, loss of mental judgement physical strength etc… hiring more may be a safety issue.
The table shows the year, the estimated population, the number of people per officer (based on 135 staffing level) and the number of officers/100,000 population.
2011 – 73,809 – 546.7 – 182.9
2012 – 73,849 – 547.0 – 182.8
2013 – 74,227 – 549.8 – 181.9
2014 – 73,590 – 545.1 – 183.4
According to a much quoted study of mid to large sized cities in Canada done in 2014 by DiMatteo, Kelowna has one of the most efficient police forces in Canada while Abbotsford has one of the least efficient forces. The City of Abbotsford-Mission has a police force of 159/100,000 while Kelowna has 112/100,000.
DiMatteo used crime rates and socio economic factors to derive at an optimum number of police per 100,000 population. Based on that, Kelowna should have 150/100,000 and Abbotsford 130.
It would be interesting to see what would happen if the analysis methodology used by DiMateo would be applied to PG.
I think the police force here has to show some tangible reasons why they want to increase the staffing level. Just because they have a larger building now, does not mean that it should be filled. In fact, the office portion of the work should be a much more pleasant experience which should result in more efficiency/effectiveness.
US studies of police force sizes per 100,000 population also show the civilian staffing levels. I think it is important to incorporate those.
P Val – it’s a good point, but the industry standard isn’t double. On top of wages, for a non union person – no benefits, it’s about 20% to cover CPP, EI and stat and holiday pay. It’s about 40% for unionized/government types because of their medical benefits and pension benefits.
So, say a cop makes $40.00 an hour, if he works overtime he makes $60.00. You’re correct that his benefits generally don’t apply to OT.
If we had another cop, he would make $56.00 an hour benefits in. 1.4 X 40. So the numbers are pretty close.
And overtime generally moves with ebbs and flows, whereas another cop is there when you need him, and when you don’t.
Now, if they are in structural overtime, where every cop is working overtime most of the time, then we run into a cycle of decreasing efficiency. Yes, they are working an extra 2 hours, but because they are always tired, they tend to fill that extra time rather than produce.
BTW – the double rule of thumb is how much you need to charge for an employee, to cover all his costs, and make a reasonable profit.
The City of Abbotsford-Mission has a police force of 159/100,000 while Kelowna has 112/100,000.
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Strange we have all these God fearing people and relatively poor police protection. Maybe we need the RCMP to protect us.
And the final word is if we are depending on our police force to solve our social problems good luck with that.
Cheers
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