'Citizens do not feel safe': London police to get $4M to hire 20 officers
London police will get about $4 million of London’s assessment growth revenue to hire 20 police officers and four civilians this year, the first step in a plan to hire 52 officers during the next few years.
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London police will get about $4 million of London’s assessment growth revenue to hire 20 police officers and four civilians this year, the first step in a plan to hire 52 officers during the next few years.
Meeting as the strategic priorities and policy committee, council members voted 14-1 Tuesday to accept a business case from staff for the hiring of the new officers.
As crime increases, London’s police force remains staffed below provincial levels, Ward 8 Coun. Steve Lehman said.
That’s led to longer response times, police burnout and Londoners giving up calling officers for help, he said.
“Our citizens do not feel safe today. Police have trimmed all the fat long ago. What we’re doing now is cutting into the bone,” Lehman said.
Ward 11 Coun. Skylar Franke was the sole councillor to speak and vote against the increase, saying city taxpayers shouldn’t be funding the mental health and addiction calls that should be answered by provincially funded social and health care workers.
London police are doing a great job, but would rather not be responding to these social service and health calls, Franke said.
Funding for police demands a larger conversation, she said.
“If we want crime to go down, we need to rebuild in our social service net,” she said. Curbing urban sprawl also would reduce police response times, Franke said.
Franke asked for more information about the breakdown of the social service and mental health calls, but city staff and other council members said the business case was based on population growth, not the nature of calls.
“If we took all those mental health and addiction calls off the dockets tomorrow, police would still need these officers,” deputy mayor Shawn Lewis said.
Several councillors agreed the issue of addiction and homelessness had to be addressed along with increasing funding for police.
“We need to both ensure we are adequately providing police services and make significant investments in tackling the social determinants putting people in the situation where they feel they need to resort to crime,” Mayor Josh Morgan said.
In their business case to city hall, police noted the force has 145 officers per 100,000 residents, below the provincial average of 181.
At the same time, London’s property crime rate is 4,346 per 100,000 people, higher than Ontario’s rate of 2,349 per 100,000.
Between 2016 and 2021, London’s population grew by 10 per cent, the fastest pace in Ontario.
That has led to higher call volumes, which in turn has resulted in longer response times, especially for non-emergency situations, police say.
If city hall approves hiring the first 20 staff members in 2023, the remaining 32 would be hired in 2024 and 2025, police say.
London police have 623 officers and 258 civilian staff members.
Councillors also agreed with a staff report distributing the rest of $14.1 million in new assessment growth revenue from 2022 to several other projects.
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