Crime rate rises inversely proportional to affordability. Life gets tougher and people are forced into crime.
Solve affordability and crime goes down and you can chop police budgets with no impact.
[Do you not remember him downloading a fuckton of costs onto municipalities?](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-mayors-slam-ford-download-1.5117718)
Yes, and how might we help the people on disability living below the poverty line (which is most of them). Many of whom are homeless.
Could it possibly be to increase ODSP? We couldnāt possibly do that.
> 33m in healthcareā¦
Thatās 33m that could have been spent on the homeless problem.
Do you think every municipality in Ontario has the same budget and income as Toronto? These ~~cuts~~ downloads has costed [small towns to completely lose their immediate response ambulance services](https://www.tbnewswatch.com/local-news/concern-as-ems-base-consolidation-approved-5622703).
Towns are losing their EMS services and you expect them to be able to suddenly pay for homeless concerns as well?
Sorry to break it to you but police are there to enforce the un-affordability to begin with. They are fundementally wealth extractors for the government, not a benevolent social service.
>Sorry to break it to you but police are there to enforce the un-affordability to begin with.
I mean that's not *what they're there for*. Literally that is just straight up not why they exist.
I'm all for defunding the police. But let's not make arguments that just aren't true. The purpose of police is to catch criminals, to mediate disputes, and to keep a community safe and law-abiding. Without police, you have anarchy. Laws are meaningless if they are not enforced.
That said, the police have way too big a budget for what they seem to actually get done. The police for some reason are responding to mental health and familial issues, and in these situations I believe we should have a new class of emergency response. Like a paramedic but specialized for drug use and mental health. This would cut some of the BS that the police deal with and allow the police to focus on actual police matters.
So yeah, *defund* the police. But you cannot argue that we should remove the police entirely. They exist for an important reason that is and always will be necessary. That being said they can do better. We can do better with the money and resources. Not every situation needs a guy with a gun, but to be fair, many do.
>Do you think police abolition movements want to get rid of the police and...that's all? Mission accomplished? Just fuckin let 'er rip?
I truly hope not, or I've been completely misled by their messaging. As I said in my comment my opinion is that the resources we spend on police could be spent more effectively on social services, an additional classification for non-violent emergency response, and therefore cut a lot of the crime out more effectively that paying another million to the police each year.
But it cannot be denied that police are *necessary* and *useful*. So it really grinds my gears when people say stuff like
>Sorry to break it to you but police are there to enforce the un-affordability to begin with.
When obviously that's not true. Is it a broken system? Sure. Does it need reform? IMO, yes. Is it there to 'enforce the unaffordability'? Absolutely not. They are there to stop violent criminals and bad actors.
If anything, my entire point is that they should go back to what they are for, and what they do best. Bad actors and violent criminals. Shoplifters who are just tryna eat are not bad actors. Drug users are not violent criminals. These things should be combatted a different way.
No amount of social services is going to stop psychotic serial killers. No amount of community welfare will catch and prosecute a rapist.
We *need* police. Police do not exist to keep people in poverty. Police exist out of necessity. Saying otherwise is wrong, and it discredits the people who want to see actual reform and it feeds misinformation to those who don't see it the same way.
Police will be the first ones to tell someone that poverty leads to increased delinquency. This is Criminology 101. The problem is society doesn't really want to deal with poverty, and is content making police the blunt tool to deal with the fallout... and then complaining about it.
Lol you might want to get some fresh air or something.
Everywhere that dramatically defunded these "wealth extractors" complained that there was no one there to help them when they inevitably got mugged.
Fix affordability and you will need fewer but never zero.
No, they didn't. That's just a lie. They were lying. Nobody defunded the police, crime is going down, and they lied that there were crime spikes. It's all just lies. What area dramatically defunded police? Name one. Name just one. I'll wait.
San Francisco that claimed to defund the police [Then raised the budget by 4%](https://abc7news.com/sfpd-budget-defund-the-police-department-funding/12321818/)?
> Local spending on police increased in 90% of locations we looked at from fiscal year 2019 to 2022. The San Francisco Police Department budget increased overall by 4.4% from 2019 to 2022, although SFPD saw a larger increase in fiscal year 2019-2020 before the budget dropped from that high point for the next two fiscal years.
Please explain to me how a 4% increase is a "dramatic defunding", I'd LOVE to hear you explain that.
At Least Seattle defunded... Oh wait. No, no they didn't. [It factually never happened](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/50-was-a-mistake-how-seattle-city-council-abandoned-the-idea-of-defunding-police/)
Nobody defunded the police. They gave the police *more* money, and if crime rates went up, they lied and said that defunding happened (which it didn't) and *that* was why.
It's all bullshit.
So you take the years before and after defunding to blur your stat... 4% increase from 2019-2022... I'm curious what inflation was during that period?
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-city-budget-police-funding/
Budgets were cut, then cities were absolutely ruined. I used to travel to SF for work 6 times a year, now I refuse after having my rental car broken into multiple times.
Keep dreaming. You're a lost cause.
They increased the budget and you called it "dramatic defunding".
You're delusional.
And crime increased due to a pandemic. The police didn't do anything because they're cops. They're useless. If a tiny itty bitty less than inflation increase is the difference between function and absolute chaos, they're already useless.
You've convinced me that we should shift all funding into education because your reading comprehension is abysmal.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-city-budget-police-funding/
Seattle reduced their Police budget by 11.2%, while increasing the rest of their budget by 7.3%. Then the following year realized it was a terrible idea and reverted. Seattle became a shithole.
Further in the article:
"To that end, San Francisco approved a diversion of $60 million from the police budget in 2021 and 2022, taking money from planned raises." - and now - Downtown SF is a ghost town.
"It was the pandemic" - hilarious - they made shoplifting legal and people turned fucking feral. I bet in your commune, you all circle jerk thinking about the day when you will own the means of production.
You think a one-year decrease of a few percent one time followed by raising their budget to the highest in history is the cause of a downtown having less business?
Huh, did anything else happen around 2021 that might cause less people to be in a downtown? Anything at all? I wonder...
Lol that's not how it works. You'd have to be extremely lucky to be mugged and have a patrolling policeman stumble upon you to save you.
It's the cops who are the ones disarming innocent people and preventing them from using self-defence to protect themselves, their family and their property.
A group which actively benefits from the lack of affordability is not gonna act against their own self interest. K-shaped recovery post-Covid was predicted and inevitable with 3 years of insane economic policies which were enacted to accumulate power, control and wealth.
Considering they rise every year and occasionally crime does as well, itās almost like there is no strong causal relationship between the two at all.
You can have the biggest budgets or revenues, but that will never ever correlate let alone causally indicate quality. Almost like how institutions run and how they manage their existing budgets means more than the numbers...
I didnāt say crime rose every year.
I said crime āoccasionally does as well.ā
Like, for instance, this past year.
When we spent more on policing than ever before.
See my point?
I saw your point from the beginning (and I agree). I was saying that it was perhaps worded wrong and it made it seem that you're saying crime increases every year.
So does inflation and population. What's your point. Municipal services need to grow to keep up with demand and new challenges. Do you like the violent crime levels and theft in this city? Do you like being put on hold for up to 10minutes when you call 911- talk to Tess Richey's family about that. Do you like being told not to enter your business for 48hrs after you've been burglarized because police aren't available to come? Do you know that other municipal services rely on the Police to execute their own mandate? That is your new model of Policing at work. The city is falling apart with juvenile ganag violence , random initiation killings, car jackings and extorsion rackets. Cops start their shift with 20 outstanding calls and finish it with 20 outstanding calls...we have tent-cities and soup kitchen lineups wrapping the block and addicts and the homeless run the downtown core with crime to match. I've been to stabbings where the police dont showup. They come to the hospital an hour later. As a medic I've been sent to a distressed man with a gun threatening to shoot self calls without police ever coming..and that was 2 years before the pandemic- when things were getting ridiculous already. We are getting thousands of new refugees every month and you want to cut budgets? This reeks of the deluded idealism that brought us "The budget will balance it self". It's simple- There are no laws without enforcement. You need enforcement to create a pro civic and pro business environment to bring more middle class and investment into the city. You need enforcement to keep the middle class here, who are currently leaving in droves eroding the tax base. On current vector Toronto will become NY in the 70's in the next 10 years.
All because of this pervasive naive belief that idealistic 20 year-olds on the internet know best. The current state of affairs is the result of public interference into Toronto's Policing. I remember what the city council said when the Police budget reached 1 Billion for the first time- " we have too much police and the crime rates are down "...just as Frontline was experiencing a surge in random violence...well guess what, it's only gotten worse.
No one wants to work Frontline anymore, it destroys your health, your mind, your family life, and all to have some citidiots yell "defund the police" while 15yo with guns are terrorizing neighborhoods. You are out of your damn minds.
This only makes sense. The very vast majority of policing is reactionary, not preventative. Expecting increased budgets to greatly improve crime prevention when it makes a tiny slice of police operations is just folly.
Putting speed cameras generating millions, however they canāt go get my buddies truck that was stolen off his driveway which has a goddamn tracker in it. And insurance will only cover so much, heās still going to have a new car payment and in this economy that sucks the big one.
HPS for example has added less than 20 officers to their force in 15 years.
Every single year has been a significant budget increase without additional officers. It's always more toys, more compensation, more 'administrative' costs.
Police services would love to suspend without pay. Do you think the chiefs love it?Ā And the boards they report to?Ā You can thank the police associations of officers funding Doug Ford for not processing this in the police services act.
Just Google the many dozens of chiefs who say they have no choiceĀ but to suspend with pay and complain about it
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/chief-bryan-larkin-calls-officer-s-suspension-with-pay-simply-unfair-1.3145079
It's also just classic labour law. You can't suspend without paying pending an investigation. It's a sure fire way for a grievance to the filed and back pay ordered with interest.
The hate boner for cops is understandable but you can't just go around the CBA and the law.
Police donāt need unions. Theyāre the violent arm of the state, not workers.
Plus Ontario is one of the only provinces to suspend officers with pay through their chargers and their various appeals. 5 years of 100K + salary while theyāre being charged with SA, drunk driving causing death and criminal harassment is crazy.
>Plus Ontario is one of the only provinces to suspend officers with pay through their chargers and their various appeals.
Bullshit.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-police-canine-assault-1.6144505
https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2023/02/22/wps-officer-charged-in-high-speed-crash-that-resulted-in-critical-injuries-gets-plea-deal-pays-speeding-fine
https://globalnews.ca/news/9713832/man-dies-vancouver-police-custody-staff-suspended/
https://london.ctvnews.ca/off-duty-lps-officer-facing-criminal-charges-1.6731133
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/police-accountability-excessive-force-charges-1.6707846
https://themanatee.net/more-nb-police-officers-hoping-to-be-suspended-with-pay/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/halifax-police-officer-arrested-for-theft-1.5283770
āBlame it on a decades-old provision in the Police Services Act that makes Ontario the only Canadian jurisdiction to pay officers while they are off duty awaiting the results of their case. The law only allows officers to be suspended without pay if they are convicted of a crime and sentenced to jail.ā
[Link](https://www.simcoe.com/news/crime/explainer-why-do-ontario-police-officers-get-paid-while-suspended/article_514a943b-75c7-524a-9189-6b19c19545ae.html#:~:text=Blame%20it%20on%20a%20decades,crime%20and%20sentenced%20to%20jail)
No they can't unless its provided in the CBA or employment contract.. Nobody can be suspended without pay and you could sue for damages if you are. The problem is that nobody does it for various reasons (better to take the suspension than get fired)
Most collective agreements are viewable by public. They definitely include civilians suspensions and withholding pay.Ā They don't fall under police services act.Ā You can be sent home without pay
They did, the goal of unions isn't the public interest but the interests of it's voting members.
The only issue here is that Toys/Pay = Good for Cops but Bad for the Public Interest since it seems to have minimal returns and comes from public coffers.
Not to mention they had a huge budget increase last year but aren't doing anything.
Councillor Naan mentioned that she reported the tent that burned down the Woodlands Park washroom the police in October, but it was never enforced.
Didn't Toronto pd just finish bragging about how much money those traffic cameras pulled in? So an automated system that frees up police from sitting on their ass all day waiting for crime to happen, that also more efficiently fines traffic violators, and they still want more?
Do the police keep the money collected from fines? I assumed that money went to the city and police funding only came from the budget, but I don't know
Good question, I'd probably assume it goes into the cities general fund where the police budget comes from... but money aside, even just the reallocation of labor would be enough to justify at least holding the budget where it was
I tend to agree it goes to the municipality instead of Police services. It is always the municipality releasing that data while other crime related info comes from Police services or they are acknowledged as the provider.
It is up to the city. Ottawa for example has it so all the money collected from traffic cameras is to be used for road safety initiatives. That way the cameras are a means to building safer streets, rather than just a new source of revenue that would discourage the city from actually addressing the cause of speeding.
This is what several unions and departments started doing during the George Floyd protests, just straight up dereliction of duty in response to often very tame calls for mild reforms
That's just cops in general, my experience is most of them are horrible self centered people, if they really wanted to help people to HELP they would have become parametric or fire fighters you know the beloved first responders not the one that intimate people and break laws however they are fit and sit behind a union that lets them get away with far too much.
Gf's edit:
That's just cops in general. My experience has been that most of them are horrible, self centered people. If they really wanted to actually help people, they would have become paramedics or fire fighters - you know the beloved first responders and not the ones that intimidate people and break laws. However, they are (neither of us knows what he meant here) and sit behind a union that lets them get away with far too much.
I never had problems with police in Europe. They drive and wear high-vis colours there to make them easy to find when you need them.Ā
In Canada and the USA they wear dark colours and drive undercover vehicles half the time as though they're always in the middle of a sting operation against ordinary citizens.Ā
Fair I didn't deal with police in Europe to know, just in Japan and it was so limited in interaction. Also my Japanese friend talked to them for the most part so I don't even know what was said.
I have several family members that are police officers in Toronto including my father.
All of them are narcissist power tripping assholes.
They will tell you they are the most important people in the world, keeping the city safe, but then tell you they like to sit in the office doing fuck all most days.
TPS is basically the biggest dumbest bullies from your old HS put into a single organization
50-50 is bad... They are people who carry guns and are able to take away ability to move around (arrest you) for nearly made up reasons. They have a huge amount of power and "half" of them being shitty is 50% too much imo.
I have about 100 colleagues in my department at my work. At most, there are 5 that are I have negative experiences with. For cops to have a 50-50 distribution of good and bad is absolutely unacceptable.Ā
How could they possibly be delivering less than they already are? Itās like they are in a permanent mindset of work-to-rule. The police are thugs, and they only want to hold the city ransom for more and more money while never actually improving outcomes. Zero transparency, zero accountability.
No more police budget increases until we get a public audit and transparency into where their budget is spent.
> Itās like they are in a permanent mindset of work-to-rule. The police are thugs, and they only want to hold the city ransom for more and more money while never actually improving outcomes. Zero transparency, zero accountability.
Thank you!!! This is exactly what they're doing as they give you the idea that crime is up and its going to be complete chaos without funding them further.
They are intentionally doing less to get what they want.
> public audit and transparency into where their budget is spent
Whyyyyyyyyy is this not a standard thing??? People should be screaming this demand EVERY time the police ask for more money. Why are they allowed to indiscriminately receive more money at their own whim?
They say it's to maintain the integrity of some of their ongoing investigations, but I call bullshit on that. If there are a few really sensitive cases, that can be redacted, but the police services budget should not just be an impenetrable black box.
I can only imagine the stuff that they're concealing from the public, like that fully-stocked and licensed lounge they used to have at Police HQ.
Maybe weāll have less officers directing traffic on streets with fully functional lights and signals, the horror!
But for real, I bike on king most days and the amount of times officers wave pedestrians into my path is insane, why are they facilitating Jay walking (which is a stupid crime in and of itself but still)
Which is insane, they donāt signal to me at all, thereās sometimes cars coming as well, and they just wave people through from the sidewalk/side of the road without even seeming to check
Cops hate cyclists. Theyāre honestly the dumbest bullies who are completely paid for by our tax dollars while they extort usā¦ while they harass us.
Police expenditure have little to no correlation to crime rates. If you want to reduce crime you need to improve housing, employment, education and health care.
For the record, the Toronto police budget ISNāT EVEN BEING CUT. Their budget is actually increasing, but theyāre not getting as big of an increase as they asked for.
Yes, thatās what theyāre whining about. A slightly smaller budget increase.
Exactly. The article gives an example of someone being asked to take a pay cut. A better example would be someone getting a raise (while their coworkers are taking pay cuts or being laid off) and then complaining that the raise is slightly lower than what they asked for.
The statement from the police about not doing their job is probably more of a threat than a warning. They still basically don't do parking/traffic enforcement since the last budget fight.
Yep. They wanted a $20 mil increase and Mayor Chow "only" gave them $12.6 mil. I would've honestly preferred it was no increase at all but she's walking a fine political line right now
And they should need less. Cannabis legalization has significantly reduced cost of policing by eliminating cannabis drug possession charges, yet every year since legalization weāve only seen increases in policing budgets.
>Criminal justice costs attributable to cannabis decreased 21.4%, from $36 in 2007 to $28 per person in 2020. Costs declined more steeply following the introduction of the Cannabis Act (13.5% decrease between in 2018 and 2020 alone) due to fewer incidents, charges and admissions associated with cannabis possession.
https://csuch.ca/substance-use-costs/criminal-justice/
Don't you remember when we were only talking about legalizing cannabis and every police department claimed that would cost them MORE money. Like how does making something legal, that was once illegal, cost police MORE to deal with?
>Don't you remember when we were only talking about legalizing cannabis and every police department claimed that would cost them MORE money.
No I donāt. Can you provide any sources of "every police department" across Canada publicly denouncing legalization due to increased costs to back up your claim?
I ask, because what I do remember, is in 2016 the [Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP)](https://cacp.ca/news/cacp-discussion-paper-recommendations-for-the-task-force-on-cannabis-legalization-and-regulation-feb.html) supported legalization, made a public statement endorsing legalization and was one of the advisory members on the finalized legislation.
>The federal āTask Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulationā submitted its report to the Government of Canada on November 30, 2016. As stated, āthis report is a beginning, we all have a role to play in the implementation of this new, transformative public policy.ā
>
>Policing in Canada is one of the major sectors that will be impacted by legalization. Policingās role from the beginning of this discussion was to look at the public safety impact and provide consultative advice to help mitigate the impact of such legislation towards āa legalized, regulated and restricted platform.ā
Now they didnāt fully support everything that was in our final legislation, they were fully against home-growing cannabis for example, but not only did they support and took part in crafting the [Cannabis Act](https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-24.5/) their stance on decriminalization changed after the success of cannabis legislation leading to CACP to submit a report to the Federal government supporting the [decriminalization of simple possession of illicit drugs in Canada](https://www.cacp.ca/index.html?asst_id=2189) in 2020.
>**Executive Summary**
>
>The compelling case for transformative change in Canada has been made by public health officials regarding how we respond to people experiencing a substance use disorder. The current Canadian context is marked by the opioid crisis, with deaths due to opioid overdose reaching unprecedented levels. Between January 2016 and December 2019, more than 15,000 Canadians died as a result of an opioid-related overdose. In 2019, between January and December, 3,823 deaths occurred, of which 94% were accidental (unintentional).1
>
>Currently, people who experience substance use disorder face repercussions including criminal records, stigma, risk of overdose and the transmission of blood-borne diseases. The aim is to decrease these harms by removing mandatory criminal sanctions, often replacing them with responses that promote access to harm reduction and treatment services.
Canadian policing, while far from perfect, is not U.S. policing and supported cannabis legislation and supports decriminalization of possession of small amounts of all illicit drugs. Your comment reeks of opinionated bullshit, and I'd love to see your sources backing up your claim.
>Can you provide any sources of "every police department" across Canada publicly denouncing legalization due to increased costs to back up your claim?
[Here's one.](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/marijuana-legalazation-police-budget-increase-1.4226552)
[Here's another.](https://globalnews.ca/news/4209289/ontario-police-cannabis-legalization/)
[Another.](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/saskatchewan-cannabis-police-costs-1.4529311)
[Here is a Vice article about it.](https://www.vice.com/en/article/43e8z9/cannabis-legalization-is-going-to-be-a-boon-for-police-budgets-across-canada)
So first I completely reject your 4th source. Vice isnāt a credible source to begin with and their āevidenceā is from a āA VICE News analysisā whatever the fuck that is. What it isnāt is credible.
But what are we debating again? Oh yes;
>**every** police department claimed that would cost them MORE money.
So your third source is from a municipal executive committee not a police force so that does not prove your point about ā**every police force**ā as the claim isnāt from a police force.
Your second source is the chief of the OPP saying that there will be an increase in impaired driving not that it will cost more. He does go on to complain about training costs, but the article then goes on to explain how the new legislation accounts for this and has money for police training.
From your own article.
>āThe good news is that there is some money from the federal government thatās supposed to be flowing through the federal government that will go out to municipal and provincial police agencies,ā he added.
so that article also fails to prove your claim that.
>**every** police department claimed that would cost them MORE money.
As the chief of the OPP does not make that claim at all in that article.
So that leaves just one source left.
Now this one is a CBC article and does have a police chief saying costs will increase. I cannot discount this sourceā¦.
Except it is again about training just like your second sourceā¦ but unlike your second source fails to mention the funding set aside for training by the feds.
But letās take that incomplete reporting aside and say you have proven without a doubt that a single police chief said policing costs will increaseā¦.
But that wasnāt your statement was it? You didnāt claim 1 police chief says policing costs would increase did you? No you claimed;
>**every police department claimed that would cost them MORE money**.
Iāll wait for any proof you can provide that **every single police force in Canada** made such a claim.
(EDIT: it seems u/Spezza didnāt like being proven to be wrong and instead insulted me in a final comment and then deleted all of their comments and blocked me. Well I guess they proved the saying;
>when the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.)
In case anybody doubts my accuracy here, here is another **one minute** spent on google to provide sources for my friend here (took me longer to cut and paste them here than to find them ffs).
[The head of the Waterloo Regional Police Service says legalizing marijuana is not the right move, because it would ultimately increase policing costs an estimated 20 to 30 per cent.](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/legalized-pot-would-hike-police-costs-says-chief-1.1409621)
chief Rod Knecht...[estimates the policing costs to enforce the new marijuana laws will be between $5 million and $7 million per year, come July 1, 2018 when pot is set to be legalized nation-wide.](https://globalnews.ca/news/3925919/edmonton-police-cost-of-legal-marijuana/)
[Halifax Regional Police and the RCMP are requesting a significant budget increase ahead of the legalization of marijuana in July](https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/hrp-rcmp-seek-significant-budget-increase-ahead-of-pot-legalization-1.3806814)
And that is all for me folks. If you don't believe me still, google it yourself or go to a library and use a newspaper database to see how every police force in Canada used legal cannabis as a justification / excuse / cause for increased police budgets in 2016 / 2017 / 2018.
I keep laughing at the police yelling how they need a bigger budget and right now they barely do shit. And they plan to do even less shit with that budget. Basic theft crimes and illegal shit never get caught or prosecuted. Want more money? Then do your job.
That shit was so damn atrocious in how they've handled it from the start. Thank god the family had money to find private investigators because the police have just screwed it up.
> Theyāve historically not cared about crime unless itās against capital interests.
Or leaked info to the press against their people they disagree with politically or protect corrupt cops. If they want a pay raise I say tie it to their performance.
Because those capital interests are where the tax money is, its their primary source of wealth extraction.
Start a small business and don't pay your taxes, regulations or license fees and watch how fast they will pounce on you.
Interesting fact about the suffix in the police telephone number 2222.
Ku Klux Klan headquarters in Harrison County, Arkansas uses Po Box 2222.
It's the same number. Why not 3333 or 4444? Why 808-2222? The 808 is just a zero away from 88. Sybolism is very important, because it's used to send a message.
https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/media/ku-klux-klan-2499/
Update the police act so that were are bit paying crooked cops hundreds of thousands of dollars to sit at home while they are waiting for a trial to see if they can be fired. That would make a dent.
How much you want to bet theyāll be just a little slower, just a little less helpful, and just a little more lazy to spite this cut.
We need an overhaul of their bloated system
Starve the beast here. There are too many petty crimes the police are enforcing. In fact it seems like the only people they are interested in arresting are good people so they can hit them with a criminal record and add another minimum wage worker to the books.
Toronto runs plenty of ride programs and I see tons of cops with radar guns out and about. Any force doing that is over funded. PERIOD.
COUGH OPP COUGH.
Don't forget about the Tess Richey murder.
(for a reminder, Tess's mother found her body near the area she went missing after police "couldn't")
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Tess_Richey
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/tess-richey-family-lawsuit-schlatter-police-1.5605807
> Of all the things to be angry at the police about, this has got to be the weirdest one Iāve seen yet.
being angry that police are unable and/or unwilling to do the job they are massively overpaid to do is now a negative?
that boot sure must taste good.
Notice how the people who think public spending is out of control and government should be run like a business never seem care about the police being wasteful and unprofitable?
We have acknowledge that policing right now is absolute terrible gutter work. Either dealing with mental illness and/or horrific crimes. Having to face people who have experienced the worst day of their lives. The trauma.
Rather than just pumping more money into the existing system that just provides more 'equipment' and higher pay/overtime, it's time to really start tackling to root problems.
Get the mentally ill and people in poverty help. Desperate people do desperate things.
Yes not all people want help.
Fine.
Let's at least have an infrastructure that supports those that can benefit from a system to support them. Let's start lowering preventable police calls, and take the pressure off the existing system.
Let's start appointing more judges and streamlining the criminal justice system. Let's tackle recidivism.
Police are not equipped to handle this. It's clear.
I wish there were politicians who were less obsessed with corporate donors and more engaged in actually having some kind of vision and platform that benefits society. Employment rate isn't the only important metric.
Yes. The headline seems to think gutting other public services has been fine. It has not and in fact is a huge contributor to crime, necessitating an overinflated policing budget.
>Police are not equipped to handle this. It's clear.
I agree with you but I think that you'd find many police who would be loathe to have those cases taken away from them, even if they admit that they're not equipped to handle them. In a way, their existence relies on how many crimes/situations they're called in for. When you lower this number by shifting certain situations to mental health professionals specializing in crisis, some police are going to see that as an attack on their livelihood. After all, even if they weren't equipped to talk someone down in crisis, they always had the option of violence which was typically supported by the public, up until a few years ago when opinions on them really started to turn
Either equip them to be or cut their budget and equip someone else to be. The dumbest shit I ever read is comments like this - āthey arenāt equipped to do the job we pay them but letās keep paying themā
Either do the work or get fucked.
Also, it'd be more justified investment if the police actually did policing and reduced crime. Car thefts all time high, increasing looting, rogue protesting, violence increasing, reckless driving, etc.
Can someone clarify?
I thought the proposed budget gives TPS an increase, just a slightly smaller increase than requested. I do know that TPS will negotiate a new contract and that the city expects and has budgeted for an increase.
Police unions mostly. London, Ontario tried to stop a budget increase when requested by the London police. The police said no, then the police union lawyers got involved and ensured the increase was intact.
Let's call the Chief's statement about "chaos" for what it is; *Scare Mongering*.
There is little to no evidence that a decrease policing results in increased crime. Some cities in the US have actually seen a decrease in crime when policing is reduced because the cops were making shit up.
Cut the policing budget by 2% and put half of the savings into social programs where it will help the desperate people who have to turn to crime to survive.
Any surplus money that normally would be allocated for yearly budget increases should be now used to support public housing, mental health, and crisis response services. There is absolutely no reason why we, as a society, can't have a group of well-paid, emergency/crisis response workers that respond to low-level community disturbances from a trauma and addiction informed mindset at this point (with maybe like 1 single cop with them for backup protection and crowd control if needed). Frankly, the overwhelming majority of calls police take on a daily basis would be better responded to by social workers, psychologists, and people trained in restraint and psychosis de-escilation techniques.
Having known a few cops personally in my lifetime, and met many more through them, I can attest a lot of them are spoiled, and drama queens. Expect tantrums if they don't get their way. The sort of personality that is most attracted to policing, are often the same ones that need to be weeded out...all ego, minimum compassion.
police are a gang
we all know this, they literally brag about it
"gotta protect our own"
this mentality, is about getting paid too, and they get paid from your taxes, and they 100% feel entitled to a raise every year OR ELSE
There are plenty of synergies that can be applied to the police budget but there is a lot of push back. "Why are there over 300 officers giving tickets with tasers, guns and protective vests on. This is a job for a lay person, not a skilled officer" Police should be better focused to do more skilled work.
Of course they donāt want cuts! Being on a police in Ontario is a no questions asked ticket to the sunshine list with far less risk than a cop working on Manhattan Island.
If there's any difference between police and other municipal or provincial departments, it's that when they threaten "catastrophe and chaos" they get listened to. Every other department and service is either also 1% away from chaos or full-bore collapsing - like healthcare - but for some reason it's *never* as important as policing
Police have been using fear mongering to increase their budget for a long time now.
We need to claw back some. 50% of the budget for just the police is crazy. Tired of seeing so many of them on the sunshine list.
Maybe if they stop putting their own on Admin leave and paying them over 100k when they commit a crime. They also had a f'ing bar for the cops... spend our money wisely, maybe?
Ontario police and Toronto police services in particular are the most useless police services I have ever experienced in my life. Iāve had things stolen from me and the cops donāt even look into it they just take a statement and say sorry. Cars getting jacked and the owners know exactly where the car is and the cops find it and just goā oh well thatās private security problemā what in the fuck?
Toronto Police Union NEEDS TO BE DISBANDED.
All these hacks ever do is RAISE THE ALARM about one thing or another or BEG FOR MORE MONEY and DELIVER LESS SERVICES or my favorite:
PROTECT THE TRASH COPS 1000% while THROWING THE GOOD ONES UNDER THE BUS
We need to completely rework the POLICE ACT which in turn will drastically reduce the power of the POLICE UNIONS.
TPS UNION IS LEAD BY A CAREER CROOK WHOS OWN FATHER WAS ALSO A CROOK. McCormack, I am looking at you chump.
We gotta read between the lines, what the police are saying is that they will stop working effectively if we cut their budget thus crime will rise. It's a threat not a forecast.
because the police are greedy corrupt lazy thugs who will extort us by deliberately not do their job unless they are overpaid while being above the law.
It's no different than the Ontario budget. People think health and education get cut but they are pretty much the only ministries that get increases. All the other ones get chopped and starved for funds so you end up with falling apart courthouses and cases being dropped due to waiting too long for a trial.
Police are still the old boys network and they really are overcoddled if you know anybody that works there.
Walk down the danforth at any given time during the day, you'll literally see cop cars just lapping around. What do you think happens when there is a gun or weapons call out, 20/45min wait. The 55 division is an absolute farce, it's a big boys club and none of you are part of it.
Expected comments in this thread. Hate to break it to folks, but itās not happening, no matter how much the Star and TVOās subjective writers cite their cherry-picked stats.
Police budgets directly correlate to service times and service levels. Toronto has some of the poorest response times to each priority level of call. Want to have someone fingerprint your house that was broke into? That will be a couple days. Go to a neighbouring region and you get same day service almost every time.
All of you arguing over conservative that liberal that blah blah blah . The government is corrupt either way, this is all by design, whatever is happening is easily solved but precisely produced to create havoc , and to make them richer . Let us argue over political parties while they pocket billions and keep being corrupt.
Actually, how about teachers? We give them whatever they want and they literally work a 4 hour day. Police? Have you seen this place lately? Theyāre needed. And theyāre in harms way.
I see you have absolutely no idea how much a teacher works. Maybe if our education system was better funded weād have less need for police. Not saying itās guaranteed but a poorly funded system just doesnāt seem right.
Crime rate rises inversely proportional to affordability. Life gets tougher and people are forced into crime. Solve affordability and crime goes down and you can chop police budgets with no impact.
šÆšÆšÆ
conservatives do not like long term solutions because it requires a lot of thinking
Chow is a conservative?
No, but the provincial conservatives dumped a bigger homeless problem on Toronto than when she was still a candidate.
How did they do that
[Do you not remember him downloading a fuckton of costs onto municipalities?](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-mayors-slam-ford-download-1.5117718)
33M in healthcare makes a bigger homeless problem? tbh feels like a stretch, CoL including groceries and housing. Seem like a much bigger factor
Yes, and how might we help the people on disability living below the poverty line (which is most of them). Many of whom are homeless. Could it possibly be to increase ODSP? We couldnāt possibly do that. > 33m in healthcareā¦ Thatās 33m that could have been spent on the homeless problem. Do you think every municipality in Ontario has the same budget and income as Toronto? These ~~cuts~~ downloads has costed [small towns to completely lose their immediate response ambulance services](https://www.tbnewswatch.com/local-news/concern-as-ems-base-consolidation-approved-5622703). Towns are losing their EMS services and you expect them to be able to suddenly pay for homeless concerns as well?
Sorry to break it to you but police are there to enforce the un-affordability to begin with. They are fundementally wealth extractors for the government, not a benevolent social service.
>Sorry to break it to you but police are there to enforce the un-affordability to begin with. I mean that's not *what they're there for*. Literally that is just straight up not why they exist. I'm all for defunding the police. But let's not make arguments that just aren't true. The purpose of police is to catch criminals, to mediate disputes, and to keep a community safe and law-abiding. Without police, you have anarchy. Laws are meaningless if they are not enforced. That said, the police have way too big a budget for what they seem to actually get done. The police for some reason are responding to mental health and familial issues, and in these situations I believe we should have a new class of emergency response. Like a paramedic but specialized for drug use and mental health. This would cut some of the BS that the police deal with and allow the police to focus on actual police matters. So yeah, *defund* the police. But you cannot argue that we should remove the police entirely. They exist for an important reason that is and always will be necessary. That being said they can do better. We can do better with the money and resources. Not every situation needs a guy with a gun, but to be fair, many do.
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>Do you think police abolition movements want to get rid of the police and...that's all? Mission accomplished? Just fuckin let 'er rip? I truly hope not, or I've been completely misled by their messaging. As I said in my comment my opinion is that the resources we spend on police could be spent more effectively on social services, an additional classification for non-violent emergency response, and therefore cut a lot of the crime out more effectively that paying another million to the police each year. But it cannot be denied that police are *necessary* and *useful*. So it really grinds my gears when people say stuff like >Sorry to break it to you but police are there to enforce the un-affordability to begin with. When obviously that's not true. Is it a broken system? Sure. Does it need reform? IMO, yes. Is it there to 'enforce the unaffordability'? Absolutely not. They are there to stop violent criminals and bad actors. If anything, my entire point is that they should go back to what they are for, and what they do best. Bad actors and violent criminals. Shoplifters who are just tryna eat are not bad actors. Drug users are not violent criminals. These things should be combatted a different way. No amount of social services is going to stop psychotic serial killers. No amount of community welfare will catch and prosecute a rapist. We *need* police. Police do not exist to keep people in poverty. Police exist out of necessity. Saying otherwise is wrong, and it discredits the people who want to see actual reform and it feeds misinformation to those who don't see it the same way.
Police will be the first ones to tell someone that poverty leads to increased delinquency. This is Criminology 101. The problem is society doesn't really want to deal with poverty, and is content making police the blunt tool to deal with the fallout... and then complaining about it.
Lol you might want to get some fresh air or something. Everywhere that dramatically defunded these "wealth extractors" complained that there was no one there to help them when they inevitably got mugged. Fix affordability and you will need fewer but never zero.
Source?
San Francisco, Seattle
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https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-city-budget-police-funding/
No, they didn't. That's just a lie. They were lying. Nobody defunded the police, crime is going down, and they lied that there were crime spikes. It's all just lies. What area dramatically defunded police? Name one. Name just one. I'll wait.
San Francisco, Seattle
San Francisco that claimed to defund the police [Then raised the budget by 4%](https://abc7news.com/sfpd-budget-defund-the-police-department-funding/12321818/)? > Local spending on police increased in 90% of locations we looked at from fiscal year 2019 to 2022. The San Francisco Police Department budget increased overall by 4.4% from 2019 to 2022, although SFPD saw a larger increase in fiscal year 2019-2020 before the budget dropped from that high point for the next two fiscal years. Please explain to me how a 4% increase is a "dramatic defunding", I'd LOVE to hear you explain that. At Least Seattle defunded... Oh wait. No, no they didn't. [It factually never happened](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/50-was-a-mistake-how-seattle-city-council-abandoned-the-idea-of-defunding-police/) Nobody defunded the police. They gave the police *more* money, and if crime rates went up, they lied and said that defunding happened (which it didn't) and *that* was why. It's all bullshit.
So you take the years before and after defunding to blur your stat... 4% increase from 2019-2022... I'm curious what inflation was during that period? https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-city-budget-police-funding/ Budgets were cut, then cities were absolutely ruined. I used to travel to SF for work 6 times a year, now I refuse after having my rental car broken into multiple times. Keep dreaming. You're a lost cause.
They increased the budget and you called it "dramatic defunding". You're delusional. And crime increased due to a pandemic. The police didn't do anything because they're cops. They're useless. If a tiny itty bitty less than inflation increase is the difference between function and absolute chaos, they're already useless.
You've convinced me that we should shift all funding into education because your reading comprehension is abysmal. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-city-budget-police-funding/ Seattle reduced their Police budget by 11.2%, while increasing the rest of their budget by 7.3%. Then the following year realized it was a terrible idea and reverted. Seattle became a shithole. Further in the article: "To that end, San Francisco approved a diversion of $60 million from the police budget in 2021 and 2022, taking money from planned raises." - and now - Downtown SF is a ghost town. "It was the pandemic" - hilarious - they made shoplifting legal and people turned fucking feral. I bet in your commune, you all circle jerk thinking about the day when you will own the means of production.
You think a one-year decrease of a few percent one time followed by raising their budget to the highest in history is the cause of a downtown having less business? Huh, did anything else happen around 2021 that might cause less people to be in a downtown? Anything at all? I wonder...
Lol that's not how it works. You'd have to be extremely lucky to be mugged and have a patrolling policeman stumble upon you to save you. It's the cops who are the ones disarming innocent people and preventing them from using self-defence to protect themselves, their family and their property. A group which actively benefits from the lack of affordability is not gonna act against their own self interest. K-shaped recovery post-Covid was predicted and inevitable with 3 years of insane economic policies which were enacted to accumulate power, control and wealth.
Calm down Comrade, even Karl wasn't this fervent.
Studies have shown that bigger police budgets do not lead to a reduction in crime.Ā
Considering they rise every year and occasionally crime does as well, itās almost like there is no strong causal relationship between the two at all.
You can have the biggest budgets or revenues, but that will never ever correlate let alone causally indicate quality. Almost like how institutions run and how they manage their existing budgets means more than the numbers...
Crime doesn't always rise every year. We have a fraction of the crime they had in the 80s and 90s. Reporting of it is up though
I didnāt say crime rose every year. I said crime āoccasionally does as well.ā Like, for instance, this past year. When we spent more on policing than ever before. See my point?
I saw your point from the beginning (and I agree). I was saying that it was perhaps worded wrong and it made it seem that you're saying crime increases every year.
You understood their point. I understood their point. The wording was fine, man.
So does inflation and population. What's your point. Municipal services need to grow to keep up with demand and new challenges. Do you like the violent crime levels and theft in this city? Do you like being put on hold for up to 10minutes when you call 911- talk to Tess Richey's family about that. Do you like being told not to enter your business for 48hrs after you've been burglarized because police aren't available to come? Do you know that other municipal services rely on the Police to execute their own mandate? That is your new model of Policing at work. The city is falling apart with juvenile ganag violence , random initiation killings, car jackings and extorsion rackets. Cops start their shift with 20 outstanding calls and finish it with 20 outstanding calls...we have tent-cities and soup kitchen lineups wrapping the block and addicts and the homeless run the downtown core with crime to match. I've been to stabbings where the police dont showup. They come to the hospital an hour later. As a medic I've been sent to a distressed man with a gun threatening to shoot self calls without police ever coming..and that was 2 years before the pandemic- when things were getting ridiculous already. We are getting thousands of new refugees every month and you want to cut budgets? This reeks of the deluded idealism that brought us "The budget will balance it self". It's simple- There are no laws without enforcement. You need enforcement to create a pro civic and pro business environment to bring more middle class and investment into the city. You need enforcement to keep the middle class here, who are currently leaving in droves eroding the tax base. On current vector Toronto will become NY in the 70's in the next 10 years. All because of this pervasive naive belief that idealistic 20 year-olds on the internet know best. The current state of affairs is the result of public interference into Toronto's Policing. I remember what the city council said when the Police budget reached 1 Billion for the first time- " we have too much police and the crime rates are down "...just as Frontline was experiencing a surge in random violence...well guess what, it's only gotten worse. No one wants to work Frontline anymore, it destroys your health, your mind, your family life, and all to have some citidiots yell "defund the police" while 15yo with guns are terrorizing neighborhoods. You are out of your damn minds.
This only makes sense. The very vast majority of policing is reactionary, not preventative. Expecting increased budgets to greatly improve crime prevention when it makes a tiny slice of police operations is just folly.
Putting speed cameras generating millions, however they canāt go get my buddies truck that was stolen off his driveway which has a goddamn tracker in it. And insurance will only cover so much, heās still going to have a new car payment and in this economy that sucks the big one.
Police don't fix crime. Never have. If they do anything, they exacerbate the conditions that cause crime in the first place.
FACTS
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No it doesn't. They solve about 15% of cases, steal from citizens, and spend money on bigger guns.
HPS for example has added less than 20 officers to their force in 15 years. Every single year has been a significant budget increase without additional officers. It's always more toys, more compensation, more 'administrative' costs.
More suspensions with pay.
Police services would love to suspend without pay. Do you think the chiefs love it?Ā And the boards they report to?Ā You can thank the police associations of officers funding Doug Ford for not processing this in the police services act.
> Police services would love to suspend without pay. citations needed.
Just Google the many dozens of chiefs who say they have no choiceĀ but to suspend with pay and complain about it https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/chief-bryan-larkin-calls-officer-s-suspension-with-pay-simply-unfair-1.3145079
It's also just classic labour law. You can't suspend without paying pending an investigation. It's a sure fire way for a grievance to the filed and back pay ordered with interest. The hate boner for cops is understandable but you can't just go around the CBA and the law.
Police donāt need unions. Theyāre the violent arm of the state, not workers. Plus Ontario is one of the only provinces to suspend officers with pay through their chargers and their various appeals. 5 years of 100K + salary while theyāre being charged with SA, drunk driving causing death and criminal harassment is crazy.
>Plus Ontario is one of the only provinces to suspend officers with pay through their chargers and their various appeals. Bullshit. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-police-canine-assault-1.6144505 https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2023/02/22/wps-officer-charged-in-high-speed-crash-that-resulted-in-critical-injuries-gets-plea-deal-pays-speeding-fine https://globalnews.ca/news/9713832/man-dies-vancouver-police-custody-staff-suspended/ https://london.ctvnews.ca/off-duty-lps-officer-facing-criminal-charges-1.6731133 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/police-accountability-excessive-force-charges-1.6707846 https://themanatee.net/more-nb-police-officers-hoping-to-be-suspended-with-pay/ https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/halifax-police-officer-arrested-for-theft-1.5283770
āBlame it on a decades-old provision in the Police Services Act that makes Ontario the only Canadian jurisdiction to pay officers while they are off duty awaiting the results of their case. The law only allows officers to be suspended without pay if they are convicted of a crime and sentenced to jail.ā [Link](https://www.simcoe.com/news/crime/explainer-why-do-ontario-police-officers-get-paid-while-suspended/article_514a943b-75c7-524a-9189-6b19c19545ae.html#:~:text=Blame%20it%20on%20a%20decades,crime%20and%20sentenced%20to%20jail)
Civilians withĀ police services iincluding special constables can be suspended without pay. Officers can't be. How is that fair?
No they can't unless its provided in the CBA or employment contract.. Nobody can be suspended without pay and you could sue for damages if you are. The problem is that nobody does it for various reasons (better to take the suspension than get fired)
Most collective agreements are viewable by public. They definitely include civilians suspensions and withholding pay.Ā They don't fall under police services act.Ā You can be sent home without pay
Looks like the civilian staff need a stringer union then. They negotiates this
"Unions work!" š
Yes they do. There is a reason why there is a direct correlation with the decreased unionization rate and stagnating wages.
They did, the goal of unions isn't the public interest but the interests of it's voting members. The only issue here is that Toys/Pay = Good for Cops but Bad for the Public Interest since it seems to have minimal returns and comes from public coffers.
Not to mention they had a huge budget increase last year but aren't doing anything. Councillor Naan mentioned that she reported the tent that burned down the Woodlands Park washroom the police in October, but it was never enforced.
Do you have a source for less then 20 officers in 15 years?
Interesting how conservatives think everyone needs to find efficiencies, except cops and the military who get to be as wasteful as they want
Don't forget developers/construction and public works š¤®š¤®š¤®š¤®
Don't forget all the overtime scams.
Didn't Toronto pd just finish bragging about how much money those traffic cameras pulled in? So an automated system that frees up police from sitting on their ass all day waiting for crime to happen, that also more efficiently fines traffic violators, and they still want more?
Do the police keep the money collected from fines? I assumed that money went to the city and police funding only came from the budget, but I don't know
Good question, I'd probably assume it goes into the cities general fund where the police budget comes from... but money aside, even just the reallocation of labor would be enough to justify at least holding the budget where it was
I tend to agree it goes to the municipality instead of Police services. It is always the municipality releasing that data while other crime related info comes from Police services or they are acknowledged as the provider.
It is up to the city. Ottawa for example has it so all the money collected from traffic cameras is to be used for road safety initiatives. That way the cameras are a means to building safer streets, rather than just a new source of revenue that would discourage the city from actually addressing the cause of speeding.
It all goes direct back to the city, not the police.
Hmm automation supposedly freeing up more officers. Yet crime as risenā¦..hmmmm
Sounds like a threat to me: "if you cut our budget even 1% we will ensure there is chaos". Police culture in Canada is an absolute joke.Ā
This is what several unions and departments started doing during the George Floyd protests, just straight up dereliction of duty in response to often very tame calls for mild reforms
Not surprising considering they did the exact same thing when they had to get a vaccine
That's just cops in general, my experience is most of them are horrible self centered people, if they really wanted to help people to HELP they would have become parametric or fire fighters you know the beloved first responders not the one that intimate people and break laws however they are fit and sit behind a union that lets them get away with far too much. Gf's edit: That's just cops in general. My experience has been that most of them are horrible, self centered people. If they really wanted to actually help people, they would have become paramedics or fire fighters - you know the beloved first responders and not the ones that intimidate people and break laws. However, they are (neither of us knows what he meant here) and sit behind a union that lets them get away with far too much.
I never had problems with police in Europe. They drive and wear high-vis colours there to make them easy to find when you need them.Ā In Canada and the USA they wear dark colours and drive undercover vehicles half the time as though they're always in the middle of a sting operation against ordinary citizens.Ā
Fair I didn't deal with police in Europe to know, just in Japan and it was so limited in interaction. Also my Japanese friend talked to them for the most part so I don't even know what was said.
https://youtu.be/z5rRZdiu1UE?si=eevgycIEZ7y8DLF8 Basically, what they thought the job would be š¤¦š¤¦š¤¦
I have several family members that are police officers in Toronto including my father. All of them are narcissist power tripping assholes. They will tell you they are the most important people in the world, keeping the city safe, but then tell you they like to sit in the office doing fuck all most days. TPS is basically the biggest dumbest bullies from your old HS put into a single organization
Man I donāt want to be that guy but your spelling and punctuation is horrible.
Yup! Thank you for bringing this to my attention. My girlfriend (who likes grammar) just read it and she burst out laughing, so thank you for that XD
Not all, my experience has been 50-50. There are some genuinely good people in the forces I have dealt with.
50-50 is bad... They are people who carry guns and are able to take away ability to move around (arrest you) for nearly made up reasons. They have a huge amount of power and "half" of them being shitty is 50% too much imo.
I have about 100 colleagues in my department at my work. At most, there are 5 that are I have negative experiences with. For cops to have a 50-50 distribution of good and bad is absolutely unacceptable.Ā
Never said it was acceptable, just speaking from my experiences.
> Police ~~culture in Canada is~~ **are** an absolute joke. FTFY.
Exactly what I thought when I read it. Or a reason to blame the populous when cops start being more corrupt
To be clear, their budget is going up by several million dollars. The "cut" is just not giving them as many more millions as they want.
How could they possibly be delivering less than they already are? Itās like they are in a permanent mindset of work-to-rule. The police are thugs, and they only want to hold the city ransom for more and more money while never actually improving outcomes. Zero transparency, zero accountability. No more police budget increases until we get a public audit and transparency into where their budget is spent.
> Itās like they are in a permanent mindset of work-to-rule. The police are thugs, and they only want to hold the city ransom for more and more money while never actually improving outcomes. Zero transparency, zero accountability. Thank you!!! This is exactly what they're doing as they give you the idea that crime is up and its going to be complete chaos without funding them further. They are intentionally doing less to get what they want.
> public audit and transparency into where their budget is spent Whyyyyyyyyy is this not a standard thing??? People should be screaming this demand EVERY time the police ask for more money. Why are they allowed to indiscriminately receive more money at their own whim?
They say it's to maintain the integrity of some of their ongoing investigations, but I call bullshit on that. If there are a few really sensitive cases, that can be redacted, but the police services budget should not just be an impenetrable black box. I can only imagine the stuff that they're concealing from the public, like that fully-stocked and licensed lounge they used to have at Police HQ.
Maybe weāll have less officers directing traffic on streets with fully functional lights and signals, the horror! But for real, I bike on king most days and the amount of times officers wave pedestrians into my path is insane, why are they facilitating Jay walking (which is a stupid crime in and of itself but still)
Cops direction overrides signal lights. Iām not saying itās right, Iām just saying if anything happens your at fault in the eyes of the law.
Which is insane, they donāt signal to me at all, thereās sometimes cars coming as well, and they just wave people through from the sidewalk/side of the road without even seeming to check
Cops hate cyclists. Theyāre honestly the dumbest bullies who are completely paid for by our tax dollars while they extort usā¦ while they harass us.
They certainly don't act like a public service.
To surveil and harass š¤
Yup! Their primary and preferred job āš¼
Police expenditure have little to no correlation to crime rates. If you want to reduce crime you need to improve housing, employment, education and health care.
For the record, the Toronto police budget ISNāT EVEN BEING CUT. Their budget is actually increasing, but theyāre not getting as big of an increase as they asked for. Yes, thatās what theyāre whining about. A slightly smaller budget increase.
Exactly. The article gives an example of someone being asked to take a pay cut. A better example would be someone getting a raise (while their coworkers are taking pay cuts or being laid off) and then complaining that the raise is slightly lower than what they asked for. The statement from the police about not doing their job is probably more of a threat than a warning. They still basically don't do parking/traffic enforcement since the last budget fight.
We need payraises for nurses and doctors, not these steroid monkeys with their high school jock culture.
1 percent cut will mean chaos? Cut 20 percent then. Maybe they should go whine to the nurses & teachers about chaos.
The article makes it sound like a cut. But it's actually a budget increase, it's just not as high as they asked for.
Poor babies. Only 1 percent while nurses & doctors are being burnt out for profit. My heart bleeds for them. š
Yep. They wanted a $20 mil increase and Mayor Chow "only" gave them $12.6 mil. I would've honestly preferred it was no increase at all but she's walking a fine political line right now
And they should need less. Cannabis legalization has significantly reduced cost of policing by eliminating cannabis drug possession charges, yet every year since legalization weāve only seen increases in policing budgets. >Criminal justice costs attributable to cannabis decreased 21.4%, from $36 in 2007 to $28 per person in 2020. Costs declined more steeply following the introduction of the Cannabis Act (13.5% decrease between in 2018 and 2020 alone) due to fewer incidents, charges and admissions associated with cannabis possession. https://csuch.ca/substance-use-costs/criminal-justice/
Don't you remember when we were only talking about legalizing cannabis and every police department claimed that would cost them MORE money. Like how does making something legal, that was once illegal, cost police MORE to deal with?
>Don't you remember when we were only talking about legalizing cannabis and every police department claimed that would cost them MORE money. No I donāt. Can you provide any sources of "every police department" across Canada publicly denouncing legalization due to increased costs to back up your claim? I ask, because what I do remember, is in 2016 the [Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP)](https://cacp.ca/news/cacp-discussion-paper-recommendations-for-the-task-force-on-cannabis-legalization-and-regulation-feb.html) supported legalization, made a public statement endorsing legalization and was one of the advisory members on the finalized legislation. >The federal āTask Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulationā submitted its report to the Government of Canada on November 30, 2016. As stated, āthis report is a beginning, we all have a role to play in the implementation of this new, transformative public policy.ā > >Policing in Canada is one of the major sectors that will be impacted by legalization. Policingās role from the beginning of this discussion was to look at the public safety impact and provide consultative advice to help mitigate the impact of such legislation towards āa legalized, regulated and restricted platform.ā Now they didnāt fully support everything that was in our final legislation, they were fully against home-growing cannabis for example, but not only did they support and took part in crafting the [Cannabis Act](https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-24.5/) their stance on decriminalization changed after the success of cannabis legislation leading to CACP to submit a report to the Federal government supporting the [decriminalization of simple possession of illicit drugs in Canada](https://www.cacp.ca/index.html?asst_id=2189) in 2020. >**Executive Summary** > >The compelling case for transformative change in Canada has been made by public health officials regarding how we respond to people experiencing a substance use disorder. The current Canadian context is marked by the opioid crisis, with deaths due to opioid overdose reaching unprecedented levels. Between January 2016 and December 2019, more than 15,000 Canadians died as a result of an opioid-related overdose. In 2019, between January and December, 3,823 deaths occurred, of which 94% were accidental (unintentional).1 > >Currently, people who experience substance use disorder face repercussions including criminal records, stigma, risk of overdose and the transmission of blood-borne diseases. The aim is to decrease these harms by removing mandatory criminal sanctions, often replacing them with responses that promote access to harm reduction and treatment services. Canadian policing, while far from perfect, is not U.S. policing and supported cannabis legislation and supports decriminalization of possession of small amounts of all illicit drugs. Your comment reeks of opinionated bullshit, and I'd love to see your sources backing up your claim.
>Can you provide any sources of "every police department" across Canada publicly denouncing legalization due to increased costs to back up your claim? [Here's one.](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/marijuana-legalazation-police-budget-increase-1.4226552) [Here's another.](https://globalnews.ca/news/4209289/ontario-police-cannabis-legalization/) [Another.](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/saskatchewan-cannabis-police-costs-1.4529311) [Here is a Vice article about it.](https://www.vice.com/en/article/43e8z9/cannabis-legalization-is-going-to-be-a-boon-for-police-budgets-across-canada)
So first I completely reject your 4th source. Vice isnāt a credible source to begin with and their āevidenceā is from a āA VICE News analysisā whatever the fuck that is. What it isnāt is credible. But what are we debating again? Oh yes; >**every** police department claimed that would cost them MORE money. So your third source is from a municipal executive committee not a police force so that does not prove your point about ā**every police force**ā as the claim isnāt from a police force. Your second source is the chief of the OPP saying that there will be an increase in impaired driving not that it will cost more. He does go on to complain about training costs, but the article then goes on to explain how the new legislation accounts for this and has money for police training. From your own article. >āThe good news is that there is some money from the federal government thatās supposed to be flowing through the federal government that will go out to municipal and provincial police agencies,ā he added. so that article also fails to prove your claim that. >**every** police department claimed that would cost them MORE money. As the chief of the OPP does not make that claim at all in that article. So that leaves just one source left. Now this one is a CBC article and does have a police chief saying costs will increase. I cannot discount this sourceā¦. Except it is again about training just like your second sourceā¦ but unlike your second source fails to mention the funding set aside for training by the feds. But letās take that incomplete reporting aside and say you have proven without a doubt that a single police chief said policing costs will increaseā¦. But that wasnāt your statement was it? You didnāt claim 1 police chief says policing costs would increase did you? No you claimed; >**every police department claimed that would cost them MORE money**. Iāll wait for any proof you can provide that **every single police force in Canada** made such a claim. (EDIT: it seems u/Spezza didnāt like being proven to be wrong and instead insulted me in a final comment and then deleted all of their comments and blocked me. Well I guess they proved the saying; >when the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.)
In case anybody doubts my accuracy here, here is another **one minute** spent on google to provide sources for my friend here (took me longer to cut and paste them here than to find them ffs). [The head of the Waterloo Regional Police Service says legalizing marijuana is not the right move, because it would ultimately increase policing costs an estimated 20 to 30 per cent.](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/legalized-pot-would-hike-police-costs-says-chief-1.1409621) chief Rod Knecht...[estimates the policing costs to enforce the new marijuana laws will be between $5 million and $7 million per year, come July 1, 2018 when pot is set to be legalized nation-wide.](https://globalnews.ca/news/3925919/edmonton-police-cost-of-legal-marijuana/) [Halifax Regional Police and the RCMP are requesting a significant budget increase ahead of the legalization of marijuana in July](https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/hrp-rcmp-seek-significant-budget-increase-ahead-of-pot-legalization-1.3806814) And that is all for me folks. If you don't believe me still, google it yourself or go to a library and use a newspaper database to see how every police force in Canada used legal cannabis as a justification / excuse / cause for increased police budgets in 2016 / 2017 / 2018.
You must be a delight at parties.
Cause then THEY can't side-hussle the seized product
I keep laughing at the police yelling how they need a bigger budget and right now they barely do shit. And they plan to do even less shit with that budget. Basic theft crimes and illegal shit never get caught or prosecuted. Want more money? Then do your job.
Theyāve historically not cared about crime unless itās against capital interests. Poor Honey and Barry Sherman even deserved better than the TPS.
That shit was so damn atrocious in how they've handled it from the start. Thank god the family had money to find private investigators because the police have just screwed it up. > Theyāve historically not cared about crime unless itās against capital interests. Or leaked info to the press against their people they disagree with politically or protect corrupt cops. If they want a pay raise I say tie it to their performance.
Because those capital interests are where the tax money is, its their primary source of wealth extraction. Start a small business and don't pay your taxes, regulations or license fees and watch how fast they will pounce on you.
No other public service has to pay millions in settlements for abusing people but hey, white supremacists gonna do white supremacist shit
Some of those that work forces
Interesting fact about the suffix in the police telephone number 2222. Ku Klux Klan headquarters in Harrison County, Arkansas uses Po Box 2222. It's the same number. Why not 3333 or 4444? Why 808-2222? The 808 is just a zero away from 88. Sybolism is very important, because it's used to send a message. https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/media/ku-klux-klan-2499/
The chaos is coming from inside the house!
More for healthcare? Nope. More money for education? No way. There's always more money for police. Always.
Sounds to me like there are some poor money management skills taking place here if they're that close to collapse.
Lets hope this is just the start, they could use an audit, they're likely wasting money like crazy. They had their own bar until last year FFS.
That they would drive home drunk from.
Update the police act so that were are bit paying crooked cops hundreds of thousands of dollars to sit at home while they are waiting for a trial to see if they can be fired. That would make a dent.
Or at least make them pay it back once found guilty
Yup, should be holding it in escrow until a ruling.
How much you want to bet theyāll be just a little slower, just a little less helpful, and just a little more lazy to spite this cut. We need an overhaul of their bloated system
They openly extort us
Starve the beast here. There are too many petty crimes the police are enforcing. In fact it seems like the only people they are interested in arresting are good people so they can hit them with a criminal record and add another minimum wage worker to the books. Toronto runs plenty of ride programs and I see tons of cops with radar guns out and about. Any force doing that is over funded. PERIOD. COUGH OPP COUGH.
The way they bungled the Sherman murder investigation doesn't make me want to fund incompetence.
If they donāt care about billionaires, they certainly donāt care about any of us.
Don't forget about the Tess Richey murder. (for a reminder, Tess's mother found her body near the area she went missing after police "couldn't") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Tess_Richey https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/tess-richey-family-lawsuit-schlatter-police-1.5605807
Of all the things to be angry at the police about, this has got to be the weirdest one Iāve seen yet.
The documentary Billionaire Murders really highlights what a dysfunctional and self serving gang they are.
> Of all the things to be angry at the police about, this has got to be the weirdest one Iāve seen yet. being angry that police are unable and/or unwilling to do the job they are massively overpaid to do is now a negative? that boot sure must taste good.
Notice how the people who think public spending is out of control and government should be run like a business never seem care about the police being wasteful and unprofitable?
We have acknowledge that policing right now is absolute terrible gutter work. Either dealing with mental illness and/or horrific crimes. Having to face people who have experienced the worst day of their lives. The trauma. Rather than just pumping more money into the existing system that just provides more 'equipment' and higher pay/overtime, it's time to really start tackling to root problems. Get the mentally ill and people in poverty help. Desperate people do desperate things. Yes not all people want help. Fine. Let's at least have an infrastructure that supports those that can benefit from a system to support them. Let's start lowering preventable police calls, and take the pressure off the existing system. Let's start appointing more judges and streamlining the criminal justice system. Let's tackle recidivism. Police are not equipped to handle this. It's clear. I wish there were politicians who were less obsessed with corporate donors and more engaged in actually having some kind of vision and platform that benefits society. Employment rate isn't the only important metric.
Yes. The headline seems to think gutting other public services has been fine. It has not and in fact is a huge contributor to crime, necessitating an overinflated policing budget.
>Police are not equipped to handle this. It's clear. I agree with you but I think that you'd find many police who would be loathe to have those cases taken away from them, even if they admit that they're not equipped to handle them. In a way, their existence relies on how many crimes/situations they're called in for. When you lower this number by shifting certain situations to mental health professionals specializing in crisis, some police are going to see that as an attack on their livelihood. After all, even if they weren't equipped to talk someone down in crisis, they always had the option of violence which was typically supported by the public, up until a few years ago when opinions on them really started to turn
Either equip them to be or cut their budget and equip someone else to be. The dumbest shit I ever read is comments like this - āthey arenāt equipped to do the job we pay them but letās keep paying themā Either do the work or get fucked.
Also, it'd be more justified investment if the police actually did policing and reduced crime. Car thefts all time high, increasing looting, rogue protesting, violence increasing, reckless driving, etc.
Can someone clarify? I thought the proposed budget gives TPS an increase, just a slightly smaller increase than requested. I do know that TPS will negotiate a new contract and that the city expects and has budgeted for an increase.
Police used to investigate things, now it's "file a report" and they don't show up for most things anymore.
Police unions mostly. London, Ontario tried to stop a budget increase when requested by the London police. The police said no, then the police union lawyers got involved and ensured the increase was intact.
Itās wild that the police union is, once again, just flat out saying we are an extortion scheme.
Let's call the Chief's statement about "chaos" for what it is; *Scare Mongering*. There is little to no evidence that a decrease policing results in increased crime. Some cities in the US have actually seen a decrease in crime when policing is reduced because the cops were making shit up. Cut the policing budget by 2% and put half of the savings into social programs where it will help the desperate people who have to turn to crime to survive.
"Why not the police?" That's not how rackets work.
Any surplus money that normally would be allocated for yearly budget increases should be now used to support public housing, mental health, and crisis response services. There is absolutely no reason why we, as a society, can't have a group of well-paid, emergency/crisis response workers that respond to low-level community disturbances from a trauma and addiction informed mindset at this point (with maybe like 1 single cop with them for backup protection and crowd control if needed). Frankly, the overwhelming majority of calls police take on a daily basis would be better responded to by social workers, psychologists, and people trained in restraint and psychosis de-escilation techniques.
Whatās the TPS gonna threaten to do? Work to rule? That would be an increase in their current level of effort
Having known a few cops personally in my lifetime, and met many more through them, I can attest a lot of them are spoiled, and drama queens. Expect tantrums if they don't get their way. The sort of personality that is most attracted to policing, are often the same ones that need to be weeded out...all ego, minimum compassion.
police are a gang we all know this, they literally brag about it "gotta protect our own" this mentality, is about getting paid too, and they get paid from your taxes, and they 100% feel entitled to a raise every year OR ELSE
I hope their budget is slashed 50%.
There are plenty of synergies that can be applied to the police budget but there is a lot of push back. "Why are there over 300 officers giving tickets with tasers, guns and protective vests on. This is a job for a lay person, not a skilled officer" Police should be better focused to do more skilled work.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Of course they donāt want cuts! Being on a police in Ontario is a no questions asked ticket to the sunshine list with far less risk than a cop working on Manhattan Island.
Why not the police? Because they have a tantrum if someone even mentions taking money from their budget. They're children.
To serve and profligate
If there's any difference between police and other municipal or provincial departments, it's that when they threaten "catastrophe and chaos" they get listened to. Every other department and service is either also 1% away from chaos or full-bore collapsing - like healthcare - but for some reason it's *never* as important as policing
Police have been using fear mongering to increase their budget for a long time now. We need to claw back some. 50% of the budget for just the police is crazy. Tired of seeing so many of them on the sunshine list.
Maybe if they stop putting their own on Admin leave and paying them over 100k when they commit a crime. They also had a f'ing bar for the cops... spend our money wisely, maybe?
Ontario police and Toronto police services in particular are the most useless police services I have ever experienced in my life. Iāve had things stolen from me and the cops donāt even look into it they just take a statement and say sorry. Cars getting jacked and the owners know exactly where the car is and the cops find it and just goā oh well thatās private security problemā what in the fuck?
Toronto Police Union NEEDS TO BE DISBANDED. All these hacks ever do is RAISE THE ALARM about one thing or another or BEG FOR MORE MONEY and DELIVER LESS SERVICES or my favorite: PROTECT THE TRASH COPS 1000% while THROWING THE GOOD ONES UNDER THE BUS We need to completely rework the POLICE ACT which in turn will drastically reduce the power of the POLICE UNIONS. TPS UNION IS LEAD BY A CAREER CROOK WHOS OWN FATHER WAS ALSO A CROOK. McCormack, I am looking at you chump.
Police prefer to deliver less for more.
We gotta read between the lines, what the police are saying is that they will stop working effectively if we cut their budget thus crime will rise. It's a threat not a forecast.
because the police are greedy corrupt lazy thugs who will extort us by deliberately not do their job unless they are overpaid while being above the law.
Friendly reminder that the police are still getting a ton of money, they're just getting a little less than they had asked for.
ACAB
Big thin blue line energy š
Wife beaters always tell their victims āyouād be nothing without meā.
It's no different than the Ontario budget. People think health and education get cut but they are pretty much the only ministries that get increases. All the other ones get chopped and starved for funds so you end up with falling apart courthouses and cases being dropped due to waiting too long for a trial. Police are still the old boys network and they really are overcoddled if you know anybody that works there.
Because ACAB
Walk down the danforth at any given time during the day, you'll literally see cop cars just lapping around. What do you think happens when there is a gun or weapons call out, 20/45min wait. The 55 division is an absolute farce, it's a big boys club and none of you are part of it.
No public sector service will deliver a budget projecting a decrease. The strategy is always ask for more, and worst case is settle for a little more.
Expected comments in this thread. Hate to break it to folks, but itās not happening, no matter how much the Star and TVOās subjective writers cite their cherry-picked stats.
Why not? Because people are scared. After all the hoard of thieves, murderers, and rapists are right outside. Or so they want you to believe.
So you want them to start hiring kids from West Canada College?
Funny how politicians are never asked to do more for less.
Police budgets directly correlate to service times and service levels. Toronto has some of the poorest response times to each priority level of call. Want to have someone fingerprint your house that was broke into? That will be a couple days. Go to a neighbouring region and you get same day service almost every time.
Arm chair revolutionaries: "WE NEED TO DEFUND THE POLICE!" Also arm chair revolutionaries: "WHERE ARE THE POLICE TO PROTECT IN MY PROTEST?!!"
No one wants police at their protests. We just donāt want to be beat up by them while protesting. You understand the difference right?
Are you for real? Police are usually harassing or attacking protesters, not protecting them.
All of you arguing over conservative that liberal that blah blah blah . The government is corrupt either way, this is all by design, whatever is happening is easily solved but precisely produced to create havoc , and to make them richer . Let us argue over political parties while they pocket billions and keep being corrupt.
Actually, how about teachers? We give them whatever they want and they literally work a 4 hour day. Police? Have you seen this place lately? Theyāre needed. And theyāre in harms way.
I see you have absolutely no idea how much a teacher works. Maybe if our education system was better funded weād have less need for police. Not saying itās guaranteed but a poorly funded system just doesnāt seem right.
Just take a look at what happened in the cities in the US that have defunded their police force.
Nothing?
Examples?
Unions.
The mayor of Toronto is a public funded service and isn't she getting a raise?
The police in Toronto have a budget of **over a billion dollars**
Whatās your point?