Hundreds more uniformed police officers — “boots on the ground” — will patrol the city for the rest of the summer, Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair announced today.
“Our intent is not to overpolice our communities, our intent is to overprotect them,” said Blair.
Using “compulsory overtime,” the police force will add 456 more officers in the downtown core during the Caribbean Carnival festival and another 350 uniformed officers just for the Aug. 4 parade.
He also pledged a “very significant” undercover police and guns and gang squad presence.
The same overtime will add “as many as 329 officers on any given day” on patrols from Aug. 6 to Sept. 9, Blair said.
“Yes, this is unprecedented. What’s happened requires this response,” he said, referring to a spate of deadly shootings across the city this summer.
“This will be real officers working in the most victimized areas,” Deputy police chief Peter Sloly said.
Blair defined those neighbourhoods as “where violence takes place.” Officers, he said, will also be at events they know about and which they identify as risky through social media.
“I’m not sure we have to stand and police every barbecue,” he said. “If we get any kind of information there’s a risk, we’ll be there to mitigate that.”
He and senior police officers pressed the message that policing and keeping neighbourhoods safe is a joint effort.
“If you know of a young person with a gun, you have to let us know,” Blair said.
Audrey Campbell of the Jamaican Canadian Association was among the community leaders with Blair at the news conference.
“There is a balance that is necessary,” between police presence and community comfort, she said.
Blair said he would work within his budget to stretch officers’ hours, rather than ask for more money. The day shifts would increase from 10 hours to 12 and the night shifts from eight to 10. The force is currently down 175 officers from the start of the year.
“If we can get it done with what we’ve got, we’ll do that.”
Earlier this week, Premier Dalton McGuinty rejected Mayor Rob Ford’s demand for an immediate funding boost for Toronto policing, instead making Ford a promise that the funding will not be slashed in the future.
In the wake of the mass shooting at a Scarborough block party, Ford had insisted that McGuinty provide an extra $5 million to $10 million to hire more officers for Toronto police’s anti-violence intervention strategy.
McGuinty instead committed to continuing rather than phasing out the current $5 million per year for TAVIS. The premier also pledged to make $7.5 million in provincial anti-violence intervention strategy (PAVIS) funding permanent.
Some, like Councillor Shelley Carol, said the announcement would help police do better long-term planning. Others, like NDP MPP Jonah Schein (Davenport), said nobody knew TAVIS or PAVIS was even in jeopardy. McGuinty responded by saying the programs’ future had been uncertain because of the province’s $15 billion deficit.
“It’s useful that the premier was able to make that commitment, and it’s a substantial amount of money,” Toronto police Chief Bill Blair said Monday.
Blair and others have credited TAVIS, which began in 2006, for contributing to a significant drop in violent crime. The money pays for four 18-officer teams deployed to high-crime neighbourhoods as the need arises.
Some residents of TAVIS-patrolled neighbourhoods, however, have said they are angered by the teams’ practice of stopping, questioning, and “carding” noncriminals
