In the Bradford West Gwillimbury-Innisfil Police Services Board meeting held on Monday evening, South Simcoe Police Chief Andrew Fletcher expressed his concerns over the ‘defund the police’ movement.
The movement has been trending worldwide, following the death of George Floyd, a Black man, under the knee of a white Minnesota police officer. Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes, a slow and painful death captured on video, that shocked and galvanized protest.
It's not a matter of over-funding the police, Chief Fletcher said; the problem lies with under-funding of social services and health care. As a result, issues like drug overdoses, homelessness and mental health crises often end up being dealt with by police.
“They talk about defunding, but what they don’t talk about is all the work that is being undertaken by police because they haven’t funded some of those other agencies,” he said. “If you want to take that money away from us, then take the work with it.”
“It’s really a double edged sword around what that looks like,” he said.
Ontario Police Chiefs are already working on new policing community safety models, that involve partnerships with community service providers and agencies to address the social issues and risk factors that contribute to crime - being proactive, instead of reactive.
Fletcher said it would be a “sad day in policing” if the government decided to mandate a “more reactive model” of policing, that focused more on the control of staff.
“The relationships we’ve built, the work we do in the communities is so paramount to our engagement with the community and hearing what they need,” he said.
Fletcher noted that South Simcoe Police already look at ways to be more cost-effective, through the budget process, maximizing the impact of public investment in the police service.
He pointed out that there has been an increased focus on mental health over the past few years. In 2017, South Simcoe Police established a mobile crisis response team, COAST (Crisis Outreach and Support Team), to address these types of challenges.
South Simcoe Police used funding from their own budget to assign an officer to work with York Support Services Network (YSSN) and the Candian Mental Health Association (CMHA), to deal with mental health crises.
"We created our crisis outreach team in fall 2017, and we wouldn’t be where we are if we didn’t agree to invest in that,” Chief Fletcher said. “They wouldn’t be able to do the work they’re doing without us, and we couldn’t do the work we’re doing without them, so it becomes a real collaboration."
And, he noted, they didn’t collaborate “blindly.” Research and cost analyses were carried out to ensure “there is absolutely a savings in time, savings, energy and effort in collaborating,” he said.
By having members of COAST involved, police have been able to divert calls and connect people with the services and care they need.
In 2019, the South Simcoe Police Service received 564 mental health-related calls. Thirteen percent (77 calls) were transferred to another agency, instead of police apprehending the individuals and taking them to hospital.
“The results of the partnerships have seen a decrease in involuntary apprehensions as well an increase in much-needed community resources being provided to clients in need,” Fletcher said.
And the number of mental health calls has been increasing every year, by about 20 percent. So far this year, police have seen a 21 percent increase, he noted. “I can’t even begin to (imagine) what the year end numbers are going to look like.”
Defunding could undermine the ability of police to respond to community needs. “When you talk about defunding, what’s going to happen to those calls?” Fletcher asked - or the school resource officer program, that builds connections and trust in local schools?
School Resource Officers can provide a role model and support for youth who may not have that in their home environment - as well as the link to community services.
“They’re there to support and advocate to help get people the help they need.”
Fletcher warned that if the conversations around defunding police and a return to a reactive model of policing continue, collaborations such as COAST will suffer.
“We need to be proactive, we need to be preventative, we need to talk about social development and we can’t do it alone,” he said.
Before considering "defunding," the chief asked the PSB to look at the work being undertaken by South Simcoe Police, in engaging with the community, and to take an evidence-based approach.
"We know we are going through strange times, but the answer in our view isn’t to defund the police, the answer is to continue to fund those needed agencies and let them do the work with us that is so drastically needed,” Fletcher said.
He also addressed the issue of body cameras.
"I can tell you that that conversation is happening at the same time they are talking about defunding the police,” he said, noting that a body cam may cost anywhere from $788 to $3,500 per officer, per year, depending on the technology used.
“For our organization alone, just to equip only our front line officers, that’s roughly $156,000 to $750,000."
Police services including Peel and Toronto are looking at investing in the cameras. Chief Fletcher said he'd love to put a body camera on every police officer “tomorrow,” noting it would likely change the behaviours of both officers and the public.
“When somebody knows they’re being recorded...they might not say some of the things they say and the conversation might go very different, and it might result in a very different outcome,” he said.
South Simcoe Police took a first step toward introducing body cameras last year. With the board’s approval, the service put in place a digital evidence management platform, to manage all digital evidence that comes to them externally from the public.
The next step will be to look at actual body cams - but first, there is a need to find a stable platform, set a strong policy around privacy, and determine when the cameras will be activated and how the data will be managed, Fletcher said.
“It’s a huge undertaking, and we will get down that path someday,” he promised, asking for the board’s patience.
“We are looking at it, and considering the options but it needs to be an evidence-based, research-based, well-thought-out plan,” he said.
As far as diversity and inclusion go, Fletcher acknowledged that his Police Service still has work to do to build partnerships with diverse community groups - but it is taking steps.
“We’ve supported various flag-raising events, we get out to community events as much as we can to support the diverse cultures in our community,” Fletcher said, and a well-attended Women in Policing event held earlier in the year focused on boosting the number of women in the local police force.
“We’ve also started to ramp up our work a bit heavier and brought that strategic direction forward,” he said. "We already had a bias-free policy in place."
Fletcher chairs the Local Immigration Partnership Council for Simcoe County; other officers sit on various committees, such as Chiefs of Police Equity and Inclusion Committee, and BWG DIversity Action Group.
SSPS have developed guidelines to create their own internal diversity and inclusivity committee, to bring forward new ideas from a “What can we do better?” standpoint.
And police are putting together a community advisory group as part of the local Community Safety Plan - but Fletcher admitted, “We can always do better, and there’s still a lot of work to be done."
