City police scrap break-and-enter unit amid provincial spending cuts

The Sault Ste. Marie Police Service has dissolved its break-and-enter unit – consisting of four, full-time equivalent officers – and has placed them on frontline duty. 

City police chief Hugh Stevenson told reporters during Thursday’s police services board meeting that move isn’t necessarily related to the more than $814,000 decrease in funding from the province’s Ministry of the Solicitor General, which includes a previously reported cut to court security funding. 

“The reality of policing is that we have to manage within our budget, and when those funds are pulled back, then we have to look at where we spend money in our organization, and our core policing objectives are frontline – answering calls for service,” said Stevenson following the open portion of the police board meeting. “So we simply reallocated our resources towards that need.”

According to the city’s police chief, those additional frontline workers are making a difference. 

Sault Ste. Marie Police Service stats indicate significant drops in property crimes, such as theft from vehicles (45.7 per cent), break-and-enters (36. 1 per cent) and shoplifting (33.7 per cent) over the first six months of 2019, when compared to numbers taken from the same six-month period in 2018. 

Besides all that, moving officers to the frontline also reduces overtime costs, says the police chief.   

“No one ever said that frontline policing is not just as good as specialized units, right? In essence, at the end of the day, calls for service are reducing, the break and enters are reducing and the crimes of violence are reducing from May, June and July this year on a four-year comparative basis, as well as a year-to-date comparative basis, as well as a monthly comparative basis,” Stevenson told reporters. “So having a well-staffed frontline works quite well, and we’re seeing that in our numbers.”

Provincial funding for police services is changing under the current Ontario government. Of the $814,000 shortfall in funding from the province, Sault Ste. Marie Police Service had to submit a grant proposal for $300,000 of that amount. 

City police didn’t end up getting that grant, which was part of a $3.8 million grant fund that saw 50 police services across the province applying for a chunk of it. 

Stevenson says that instead of receiving that $300,000 outright as it normally would, city police had to explain, in writing, the reasons for why Sault Ste. Marie Police Service needed that money in order to police the community. 

“The police service was not anticipating the loss of revenue to the prisoner transport,” said Stevenson. “They [Ministry of the Solicitor General] did, however, let us know that of the $900,000 we receive for the officer grant, that $300,000 [of the $900,000] we would be competing for in terms of putting a proposal together as to why we needed it, and the government [divided] that up according to their understanding of need.” 

When asked for his reaction to the rejected grant proposal, Stevenson remained diplomatic about the funding shortfall. 

“Well I think policing is a shared responsibility, both through the municipality and the province,” he said. “I think we all have an obligation to fund policing, and the municipality has a share of it here, and they’re doing a wonderful job.”

The Sault Ste. Marie Police Services Board approved its 2020 budget of $27,539,146 during Thursday’s police services board meeting.