Lethbridge boosts police funding in wake of violent crime surge

Lethbridgeis boosting funding to its police service by more than $1.5 million over the next two years, in part due to a spike in violent crime that has led to increased overtime costs for officers, the chief says.

"The investigative techniques and processes that are required through that, they really go through your resources and your officers," Lethbridge Police Service ChiefRobert Davis said, noting police have dealt with more murder or attempted murder cases recently.

• Police investigate suspicious death in Lethbridge
• Lethbridge drug house shuttered after charges fail to stop illegal activity

Another budget strainis theunexpected withdrawal of $100,000 in annual provincial funding due to the nearby town ofCoaldalemoving toRCMPpolicing.

There is also a growing need forlegal fees, Davis said, as scrutiny of police actions has mounted in past years. The annual legal budget needs to grow to $165,000 from its previous level of $65,000, according to the chief's presentation to council.

Lethbridgecity council voted 8-1 on Monday in favour of bumping up the base budget for the police service by$700,000 in 2017 and $830,000 in 2018.

Those increases will bring total operating costs to $33.6 million next year, which placesLethbridge third in the province in terms of police spending per capita, behind only Edmonton and Calgary.

"We certainly don't want to undermine the police service in terms of depriving them of funding," said Mayor ChrisSpearman.

"But at the end of the day, when one out of every five tax dollars is going to policing, we have to be accountable to the taxpayers to saythis money is being well spent."

More crime, more overtime

Roughly 30 per cent of policeovertime has come from major cases, Davis said.

While Lethbridgehas typically seen two or three homicides in a year, there were four last yearand six in 2015.

"Those types of things are not things we're used to seeing in a city of 100,000," Spearman said.

Davis said one of the less complicated homicide investigations cost $132,300 in overtime, alone.

And recent trends have the chief concerned.

"While crime severity shows violent crimes going down nationally, it's a different picture when you look at the Prairie provinces," Davis said.

"We're seeing the opposite we're seeing violent crime increase. So we're actually going against the national trend, and Lethbridge is just a microcosm of what's going on throughout the province."

Budget precedent

Coun.Jeff Coffman was the lone vote against the move to inflate the budget, saying his concern was more with the way council went about the decision than the decision itself.

"It's just not the process that we follow, nor does it really challenge our new chief to find greater efficiencies within his department," Coffman said.

On the city'sfour-year budget cycle, the 2017 and 2018 budgets were approved in 2014, and Coffmansaid this is the first time council has granted a request like this mid-cycle.

He anticipates further increases, when the next four-year budget is hashed out.

"It sets the precedentthat we'll just arbitrarily raise budgets as we go," he said. "Parks department could come next week and ask for an increase in their budget, transit could do that."

Holes in the frontline

The police service will look to fill seven frontlinevacancies now that thebudget increase has been approved, which would return its staffing complement to the size it was in 2014.

"The decision we made was to leave those retirements vacant until we knew what the outcome was going to be of our budget ask," Davis said.

"If we didn't get it, we might have had to face the possibility of leaving those positions empty but that impacts our frontline policing levels."

Spearman said he aims to to contain the police budget in the future by focusing more on crime diversion and prevention strategies.