Chief highlights effect of social issues on policing costs

The budget for Prince Albert police hasn’t been made public in the past, but its police chief has no issue talking about the economics of his service.

Chief Troy Cooper’s first message to a group of Prince Albert businesspeople at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon was this: policing is not a business, it’s a service.

However, there were a few similarities between the two from his perspective. One of those is that Prince Albert Police Service (PAPS) strives for efficiency.

Cooper pointed out that the purpose of policing is to deal with crime, yet 70 per cent of his officers’ work has nothing to do with crime.

He drew from his briefing with officers earlier that day about what had happened on Wednesday night. There were three stabbings, a high speed pursuit, and an officer injured.

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Among the more than 60 calls for service, most of them were for public intoxication.

“Our solution is prison. This is a health issue, this is an issue that’s a community issue, and we’re solving it with prison. And I think that that’s inappropriate. I think that we need to look at a broader way of dealing with and addressing that,” Cooper told reporters after his speech.

Cooper is an advocate of the province spending “social money” on items such as on-reserve education, literacy programming, community mobilization and health programming.

“When you cut funding, there’s a ripple effect often. For example, if there’s programs in schools to reduce violence, we know that that’s going to be felt in policing costs at some point,” he said.

He acknowledges the province has been generous when it comes to funding more police officers, but said cutting programs directly impacts police costs.

“It’s not politically very palatable to cut police. That’s one of the last things people want to do,” Cooper said.

He proposes a different way of looking at policing, which is a “really expensive way to address” social issues.

“For years there was a criticism on the high cost of policing, and people looked at salaries instead of looking at what we’re asking the police to do. Maybe there’s a better way to do that. Maybe there are some alternatives that are less expensive.”

Cooper sees the model of different levels of training for law enforcement coming to policing nationwide over the next few years.

“To have a police officer on foot patrol when a bylaw officer or community safety officer, or security guard, can do that kind of work, I think policing will move there eventually,” he said.

Prince Albert currently has seven community safety officers, which means they need seven fewer officers in the PAPS.

This reduces overtime, and the cost of the community safety and bylaw officers is less than a “full-blown officer,” Cooper said.

Prince Albert isn’t the only community looking into this, he said. Vancouver also has community safety officers right now.

claskowski@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @chelsealaskowsk