Cutting Cops or Cutting Deals?

Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair is suggesting that a reduction in the police service's budget will operate to compromise public safety in the city and will entail the release of somewhere close to 1,000 front-line officers:

Cops to be axed to meet budget

This, however, is a very familiar refrain when municipal authorities seek to rein in the spending commitments of any police service. There is an initial flurry of activity where the senior police executive go through the motions of calculating impacts on their department. There may even be genuine alarm within the organization as individual units and sections are tasked with calculating certain efficiencies that might meet these budget parameters.

What always happens is that the chief of police will make a stern and sobering pronouncement that any reductions will seriously and systematically impact the safety of citizens. What is rarely mentioned is that reductions may be achieved without touching the front-line officers. There are several "layers" of personnel within every police department around the world. They are:

Visible officers;
Specialist officers;
Middle management officers;
Back office personnel; and
Senior management officers

These groups all play specific and important roles within each department and it is typically only the "visible officers" whom the public interact with on a regular basis. These are the cops on the beat, the uniformed, sworn officers we see at the front-line working level in every city department. But this listing of personnel does not even begin to speak to the other layers of personnel within a department: the civilians. Many departments across Canada, including the Toronto Police Service, have dozens, even hundreds, of civilian personnel who do work that is designed to support the front-line service delivery of policing services.

It would be healthy, helpful and honourable if senior police executives spoke more candidly and comprehensively about what is do-able and desirable in trying to get a handle on the unsustainable budgets currently being proposed for modern police services. It may be time to begin an open and direct dialogue on where savings may be found within Canadian police departments through the deployment of another category of police officer, not unlike the community support officers currently in place in the UK. It may also be time to press senior police executives on the need to realize true economies in policing that accept the growing reality that public police organizations do not hold a monopoly on public safety and that alternative models, modes and methods need to be explored if we are going to have public safety that is affordable into the future.