404 arrests made in downtown Windsor in first quarter of 2019

Downtown Windsor saw more than 400 arrests made in the first three months this year, which deputy police chief Brad Hill considers a "very good success."

"I hope that the added police officers downtown has helped to make the downtown a safer and comfortable place for people to visit," said Hill after Thursday afternoon's Windsor Police Services Board meeting.

The arrests were made by both the City Centre Patrol unit and the Problem Oriented Policing unit. The latter is a newly-formed team staffed with 12 officers.

Hill said there have been 12 more officers approved by city council during budget deliberations, but they have not hit the streets yet.

Out of the 404 arrests, both CCP and POP units made 202 each. The reasons for arrest include nuisances, assaults, break and enters and drugs-related problem, according to Hil.

"That drug problem is fed by people stealing and breaking into cars, and converting items to cash, so that they can buy drugs and use drugs," said Hill.

Future steps

Ward 3 Coun. Rino Bortolin and board member said business owners and residents in downtown feel the police presence and they're "happy to see some strides made on the ground."

The next steps, he hopes, is to track those calls for service and look more closely at potential problems with repeat offenders.

"Ideally finding a way where if it is drug related, that we are able to get them into addictions services or something like that, or dealing with it from the courts," said Bortolin.

Another use for having more statistics, he said, is to see how police might work with outside agencies for certain calls for service that might be non-crime-related, like mental health calls.

"If we're finding out that we're passing off 50 calls, 100 calls, 200 calls, 300 calls, that has a difference on how we actually approach it going forward."