Calls to the cops are increasing, but South Simcoe police say they have strategies to deal with it.
South Simcoe Police Chief John Van Dyke and Deputy Chief Sheryl Sutton provided the monthly updates for May during the police services board meeting at the South Division building in Bradford earlier this week.
Sutton presented the operating report which showed 2,867 total calls for service in May with 48.32 per cent in Bradford and 51.68 per cent in Innisfil.
So far, every month in 2023 has seen a greater number of calls for service than in the most recent pre-pandemic year of 2019, with 13,266 so far in 2023, compared to 12,328 at same time in 2019. Only April of 2023 had fewer calls at 2,605, compared to 2,663 in 2019.
“Our communities are getting busier and our officers are getting busier,” Sutton said.
She attributed the increase to a variety of factors including a larger population, people being more willing to report problems to the police and people being more stressed.
“People are just a little bit overwhelmed, just troubling times. It’s not one thing; it’s a variety of things,” Sutton said.
In response, the service is implementing several programs to help officers be as efficient as they can.
As previously reported, the service completed its rollout of the body-worn camera program last month, and Sutton said the service is now getting the video redaction unit into place, to prevent the burden from falling onto officers.
“We’re working with other police services for the best practices to go about the redaction because there’s a lot of work that goes with that,” she said.
Taking things one step further, Sutton said the service is also working to implement a Crown briefing unit staffed by civilians to handle administrative responsibilities on behalf of officers.
“They can be sitting and doing that paper work and that frees up the officer to go out on the road and answer calls for service,” she said.
The meeting also came one day after the service announced 14 new automated licence-plate readers had been installed in 14 police vehicles, including the traffic unit.
The costs to both purchase and install the scanners was covered by a $278,000 grant from the Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor General.
“It’s a notification system. It’s like ‘hey, you may want to take a look at this vehicle,’ ” Sutton said.
The system will provide officers with information from the Ministry of Transportation based on vehicle plates in real time, alerting the officers to such things as expired plates, suspended drivers, uninsured vehicles, etc.
“It’s scanning, scanning, scanning and it’s amazing how well it works. You don’t have to be directly facing a plate, it can be a side angle and the technology is really slick,” Sutton said.
Van Dyke also noted a recent grant that would allow joint submissions between two boards to tackle auto thefts, and as a result, he said South Simcoe Police Service is looking to team up with Barrie Police Service to create a joint auto-theft unit that would be fully funded by the province.
“They steal cars in Bradford, Innisfil and Barrie on the same night. It’s the same people stealing the same cars in the same area, so why not team up together?” he said.
The service is also hoping to introduce an online reporting tool next year called Cop Logic.
“If you have minor calls for services, like theft from gas or mischief to your vehicle, a person can do that at their convenience from their home and they just fill in online reporting which will be sent to us,” Sutton said.
That could lead to an even greater increase in calls for service.
May saw 136 motor vehicle collisions with 72 in Bradford and 64 Innisfil. Out of all of those only 16 resulted in injury, with one fatal.
Only 36 of the 2,867 calls for service were the highest priority 1, while 903 were priority 7, and 888 were priority 4.
There were some areas in which calls decreased in May 2023 compared to May 2022, including:
- Break and enters decreased to nine from 24
- Assaults decreased to 12 from 18
- Thefts from vehicles decreased to three from 10
- Domestics decreased to 70 from 85
However, there were other areas in which calls increased in May 2023 compared to May 2022
- Shoplifting increased to 11 from four
- Bylaw increased to 33 from 16
- Vehicles stolen increased to 12 from six
- Mental health calls increased to 26 from 20
The last category is of particular concern to Van Dyke.
On June 14, he attended an advocacy meeting with community partners for a 15-year-old girl from Innisfil for whom, as of Tuesday, the police had received 57 mental health calls for service since February, with four just over the weekend.
“There’s a lot of dispute on whether her issues are mental health related or behavioural related or both. The problem is getting a diagnosis at her age,” Van Dyke said.
He said she regularly threatens to suicide by jumping off bridges, laying on train tracks, laying on busy roads and sitting on the roof of her house threatening to jump off.
Van Dyke said he pushed for the meeting and feels the girl needs a secure treatment facility, but that there isn’t currently a spot available for her anywhere in the province.
As a result, he said he and the community partners are writing a letter to minister of social services and the minister of health to advocate making the girl a priority.
“From a police perspective we’re afraid she’s going to end up killing herself one of these days even though she probably really doesn’t mean to,” Van Dyke said.
He added that the 57 calls have required almost $40,000 in police resources and that the girl has been hospitalized more than 40 times.
“It is a very complex case, and unfortunately the police are the fall back, when other services drop the ball or don’t have the capacity the police end up having to carry the brunt of the load,” Sutton said.
