There is a recent Maclean's magazine article that considers the question of too many cops factored against the continuous drop in overall crime rates in Canada:
Too Many Cops?
There are comments by two individuals who bring an academic perspective to this topic: Neil Boyd from Simon Fraser University in B.C., and Christopher Murphy, who's a criminologist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. With crime rates declining in a relatively consistent many over the last several years, it's clear that society is both evolving as well as being protected by its existing police services. Unfortunately, very little research has been done to identify the precise elements influencing these declining rates of crime. Unlike other jurisdictions, especially in the United Kingdom and the United States, Canada no longer has a vigorous research capacity at the national level to support, sustain and disseminate evidence-based studies of policing, public safety and security. The UK benefits from the work of the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), the Home Office, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of the Constabulary (HMIC), and a host of think-tanks (e.g., demos) that devote considerable attention to law enforcement and related topics. In the US, the National Institute of Justice collaborates with several agencies to produce high-quality research in this area and organizations like the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) work toward a better understanding of specific policing challenges. Canada's record of achievement in this area is sorely lacking and it means that in this vital area of public policy we are poorly served.
The effort to identify the number of personnel required for an "adequate and effective" police service in Canada is influenced by a myriad of factors. Traditionally organizations have relied on some combination of inputs including: calls for service, crime rates, clearance rates, police to population ratios among others. Always these calculations are complicated by the reality of unreported crime which represents something akin to a submerged iceberg that may, or may not, be larger than the actual reported crime statistics. Some research has been done on the evolution of the workload, or "busyness", of police officers. This has included calculations based upon the incredible increase in paperwork required to process cases. Such an increase has been exponential due to the introduction of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, other case law and statutory requirements on the police, including disclosure requirements that considerably increase the information the police are required to process and provide to the Crown.
However, all of these considerations do not adequately address the pressing reality that we may have more police personnel than necessary to provide a threshold level of policing services in Canada. It's possible to contemplate the introduction of another level of police officer not unlike the community support officers found in Great Britain. These are individuals who are trained and authorized to function at a reduced capacity to regular police constables. They are not unlike auxiliary police officers which are found in many police jurisdictions across Canada, however, these are paid members of the department and are sworn officers who carry a more restricted range of powers and functions. It has been difficult to open channels of debate, dialogue and discussion with regard to this category of police personnel, largely due to the extreme opposition of police associations and unions who see this as an erosion of their monopoly of public policing. However, with increasing numbers of police officers making well in access of $100K annually, it's impossible to foresee municipal, provincial and federal taxpayers being able to sustain these kinds of salaries, wages and benefits into the future.
The analogy to the medical world may be apt here. Consider the hierarchy of personnel who now function in an integrated manner in the health care industry; doctors, medical specialists, nurses, nurse practitioners, administrators and a host of other personnel allow the patient to receive care, treatment and services from a wide range of practitioners. From a community wellness perspective it begs the question: Can public safety be secured and preserved with a similar range of personnel in police organizations? Clearly, this is a question that can best be answered with careful and measured research. It is, however, a question that does need to be asked in the public forum. Currently, it one that is simply dismissed out of hand and unrealistic, unwelcome and unacceptable to the existing paradigm of public policing.
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