Outrage over brutality and calls to 'defund the police' in U.S. cast new light on Toronto police budget

Would Regis Korchinski-Paquet still be alive ifa mental health nurse had turned upwhen her family called 911instead of just police officers?

What about D'Andre CampbellorAndrew Loku? Or Sammy Yatim?

The answer to that willnever be known.

Butas protestsover police brutality and racism continue across the United States and beyond, sparked by the case of George Floyd an unarmed black man who died in police custody after anofficer pressed his knee onto his neck one refraingrowing louder and louder is:"Defund the police."

Exactly what that means can differdepending on who you ask. While some have called for anoutright abolition of police forces,others favour reducingpolice budgets so that their work focusesmore squarely on violent crime.

Either way, the sentiments behind the ideastem from a singular question, saysAlok Mukherjee, who spent a decade as the chair of the Toronto Police Services Board:"Is that armed, highly paid officer the right resource for that function?"

Defunding the police, for Mukherjee, begins with asking, "What percentage of the police officers' work involves drawing the gun? Dealing with violent crime? And what percentage of the work involves social issues?"

"I think the pressure right now around defunding creates an opportunity for people to be seriously thinking about these issues," said Mukherjee,who first wrote a paper asking those very questions about a decade ago.

Single-biggest line item in Toronto's budget

In Toronto, the police service is the single-biggest line item in the city's $13.5-billion operating budget. Out of an average property tax bill of $3,020, the largest share about $700 is allocated topolice. That's followed by about $520 for transit. Shelters and housing take up about $150while about $60 goes to paramedic services.

Over the past several years, the police budget has risenpast the$1-billion mark. It first hit that markin 2015, withMayor John Tory saying at the time, "We can't afford to keep the cost going up."

There was talk of reducing the size of the force, with the mayor suggestingthe service might need to shed some ofits 5,400 officers.

Still, the budget increased by nearly $41 million last year, with nearly 90 per centgoing toward salaries.

Toronto has seen police officersstationed in schools, called on to respond to mental health crises and embedded in neighbourhoods to foster community ties.

Those, according to University of Toronto sociology professor Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, are just some of the ways in which police have been asked to do more and more over the course of the last few decades.

"In much of the West in the 1980s and 1990s, when we saw the defunding of a variety of very important social services, the police were often left to pick up the slack, and their budgets reflect that," said Owusu-Bempah.

"We've seen a proliferation of gang intervention and prevention programs that include funding for the police ... rather than simply providing after-school services, education services, extracurricular activities and sports activities for young people in disadvantaged neighbourhoods," he said.

About 30,000 mental health calls each year

Owusu-Bempahsays he's not a "police abolitionist" but thinks a serious distinction has to be drawn between what the police are and are not.

"They're not educators;they're not social support workers," he said

"I want the police to keep my community safe, and unfortunately, the reality for many people is ... the police are ill-equipped to do many of those things."

WATCH |Black Lives Matter co-founder Sandy Hudson on defunding the police:

Anti-black racism protests reignite calls to defund police

4 years ago

Duration 10:28

As anti-black racism and anti-police brutality protests continue after the death of George Floyd in police custody -- calls are reignited to defund, or even abolish the police. For more, CBC's Carole MacNeil speaks with Black Lives Matter co-founder Sandy Hudson.

Out of the nearly one million calls Toronto police respond to every year,about 30,000 are mental health calls, said the department's spokesperson,Meaghan Gray.

"Itis important to note that all police officers are trained to respond to mental health issues," Gray said.

Their annual training consists of courses on communication and de-escalation techniques.

The Toronto policemobile crisis intervention teams, which include atrained officer and a mental health nurse who respond to people in crisis, attend 6,000 mental health calls each year. Those teams do not go to calls where a weapon may be involved.

That wasthe case withKorchinski-Paquet, a 29-year-old Toronto woman who fell to her death from a 24-storey balcony after police were called to a domestic disturbance at her family's apartment last week, Chief Mark Saunders told reporters last week.

Saunders said Toronto police received three calls for an assault with two saying a knife was involved.

Korchinski-Paquet's relativeshavesaid police were called because of a family conflict that left her in distress.Claudette Korchinski-Beals, her mother, has said she asked police to take her daughter to Toronto'sCentre for Addiction and Mental Healthto get her helpbut that instead, she ended up dead.

"I'm not going to send a nurse to a knife fight," Saunders said when asked why a crisis team didn't respond.

The province's police watchdog,the Special Investigations Unit, is looking into the circumstances surroundingKorchinski-Paquet's death, which occurred whileshe was alone with officers in the apartment.

'Naive to reduce police officers' for now: chief

Speaking to reporters Thursday, Saunders spoke about the strain on the police service, saying, "Why do we do over 30,000 calls for mental health? We are law enforcement."

But whenasked if he would be willing to take a hit to the police budget to free up more money for community groups doing that kind of work, Saunders wouldn't answer directly.

This is not about saying that we shun the police from our community...- Stachen Frederick

Over the past 12 years, Saunders said, police have been the de factoservice in terms of responding to mental health crises across the city especially between the hours of 4 p.m. and 6 a.m.

"Right now, we've got a responsibility, and we've got a role, and that role is to keep the community safe. Now, we need other agencies to help offload those responsibilities ... then we can start talking about reduction.

Until then, he said, "It would be naive to reduce police officers."

'Intervention is not better than prevention'

Stachen Frederick, executive director of the Frontlines community centre in the Weston area of Toronto, says reallocating some of the funding to services such asthe youth, meal and job programs her organization provides, would go a long way.

Frederick says many youth workers can find themselves in precarious situations becauseunpredictable fundingmakesit difficult for the young peopletheyserveto develop lasting relationships with them.

Community organizations have the capacity to support the needs of specific neighbourhoods, she says, addingthe work police doin hercommunity is often about intervention, notprevention.

"This is not about saying that we shun the police from our community," she said. "The police are there to serve and protect. The same as teachers are there to teach.

"Whenyou look at police and engaging in supporting police initiatives, that's a policing of the community. And we know that intervention is not better than prevention."