A new Fraser Institute report focused on what the think-tank calls overstaffed police services shows a very different situation at Waterloo Regional Police.
According to the report, the WRPS sits as the sixth-most understaffed municipal policing organization in Canada – and the most understaffed in Ontario.
On the other end of the spectrum, Windsor was ranked as having the third-most overstaffed service in Canada, and the most overstaffed in Ontario, with Niagara Regional Police one slot behind.
Overall, the think-tank found that policing costs have nearly doubled since 1986, even though the crime rate has dropped by more than one-third over the same period.
Paul Perchaluk, president of the Waterloo Region Police Association, chalked the rising costs up to the changing nature of policing.
“Policing … has gotten way more complicated than it was 20 years ago,” he said.
Specifically, Perchaluk pointed to the rising cost of conducting an investigation, the increased population of the region and the higher demand for police to provide mental health-related services.
“When people don’t know where to turn anymore, they turn to us. We can’t just say ‘Sorry,” he said.
“As everybody else cuts back, we’re the last line of defence.”
Coun. Tom Galloway, who chairs the region’s police board, said the study’s methodology may have contributed to the ranking of WRPS, as it focused on staffing levels of uniformed officers.
“We’ve civilianized a lot of functions that in other services are done by uniformed staff,” he said, citing court services and human resources as examples.
Waterloo Regional Police have added 150 new officers to the organization over the past 10 years, Galloway said.
