Police boost budget by 13.5 per cent, with focus on downtown patrols

The Sault Ste. Marie Police Service wants to increase its budget to nearly $39-million in 2024, representing a 13.5 per cent overall hike in police spending over the previous year.  

On Thursday, the Police Services Board heard the proposed budget boost — to $38,956,531 — will help fund an increased complement of police officers downtown, the implementation of body-worn cameras and additional dispatchers hired to field calls for service from the public.

The base budget for the municipal police service, meanwhile, will increase 6.4 per cent next year — up from last year’s budget increase of 5.3 per cent.  

“I can tell you base budgets in policing across Ontario has went up, and some are struggling with it being in the double-digits just on the base [budget],” said Sault Ste. Marie Police Service Chief Hugh Stevenson, during Thursday's board meeting. “I think we’ve done our due diligence in ensuring that we’ve tried to keep it as low as possible.”

Stevenson said additional increases to spending over and above the police service's base budget will help fund three specific projects, with an increased police presence in the city’s downtown core as the centrepiece. During the board meeting, the police chief described last year’s complement of officers downtown as “not adequate and effective” given the rash of incidents over the past weeks, which included a homicide and an attempted murder. 

“It puts us to the point where we’re going to have difficulty responding to 9-1-1 occurrences,” said Stevenson. “As chief of police, my responsibility is to make sure you have adequate and effective policing on the most basic calls, which are 9-1-1 calls.”

The downtown division will consist of 17 officers, with four platoons consisting of four officers each. All downtown platoons will be assisted by one staff sergeant. Stevenson said the cost associated with increasing the complement of officers will be spread out over three budget years in order to reduce the financial impact on both the city and its taxpayers.   

“We are currently in the process of looking for the best location, and that will evolve over time. But this presence in the downtown core will reinvigorate the community to come downtown,” said Stevenson. “You’re going to see police in every way, shape or form on bicycles, on foot patrol, in vehicles.

“We’re going to flood the downtown core, the Queen Street [and] Wellington businesses, to make sure that they know those businesses."

Stevenson said the increased police presence downtown will be seen around the clock. 

“We’ve done our best to make sure that we didn’t do it halfway — to run a proper division, we needed 17 bodies…and that is what the expense is,” he told board members. “And the community will see the difference in terms of police presence and investigative assets in the downtown core and across the city when needed in other areas.”

Body-worn cameras will be purchased as a package that will be funded over 10 years as part of an effort to “increase the transparency of the organization” while allowing police to “capture data immediately.”

“It’s a more efficient way of doing business, and at the end of the day, it puts us in the proper technological space where we should be as a progressive, growing police service,” Stevenson said. 

The addition of four communication operators to dispatch calls for service is also helping to drive the budget increase, the police board heard.

“There’s never a good time to increase budgets — never. And you know what? There’s always controversy that creates from that,” said Police Services Board Chair John Bruno. “But we are resolved in the fact that we think that is the best way to move, and we are committed to improving Sault Ste. Marie.”