Calgary police spent double its overtime, call-out budget last year: report

The Calgary Police Service spent nearly double its overtime and call-out budget last year, amounting to a little more than $22-million — significantly more than the $11.4 million set aside.

The variance was first reported by the CBC, which says it received an email from someone within the force that included the information.

In a response to CityNews, the police force didn’t confirm the CBC’s report, but says there was a large number of protests in 2023 — some massive in size — that made it harder for police to manage resources.

“It was a year of continually having to augment staffing to circumstances that were entirely unforeseen and therefore impossible to factor into our budget,” a CPS spokesperson said in an email to CityNews. “This was outlined in Council in November when we identified that we had more requests for police officers to be assigned to more places than we could accommodate.”

CPS added that specific figures couldn’t be released or confirmed as final year-end results have yet to be presented to the Calgary Police Commission, which has oversight and governance of the force’s budget.

“It would be inappropriate to make specific details public before they get an opportunity to review it,” the force said in a statement.

This is a developing story.