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Toronto/CMED: Toronto Police Service (TPS) proposal for its operating and capital budgets for 2022 had been unanimously approved by the TPS Board’s special meeting on Jan 11 allowing maintenance of its current staffing levels and promoting police reform work for community safety.
The increase of 2.3 percent over the previous year’s budget is still lower than inflation.
The budget proposal also does not show an increase in the Service’s share of the City of Toronto’s overall budget but the strategic reallocation of existing resources allows for innovative enhancements in a number of priority areas.
The priority areas include implementation of recommendations from Missing and Missed Report to improve the Service’s ability to investigate missing persons in our city, strengthen relationships with the communities we serve, reduce victimization, and save lives by enhancing the Neighbourhood Community Officer (NCO) Program with a mandate to build relationships to solve problems within their neighborhoods and the communities they serve.
The concentration of the proposed budget in other priority areas is to increase transparency, continued Roll-out of Body-Worn Camera (BWC) Program, to enhance accountability for rights protections to improve law enforcement practices by additional training, supervision, or discipline; and partnering with the City of Toronto to provide enhanced mental health training to more police officers with a focus on Improvement in Response to People Dealing with Mental Health and Addictions Issues.
“The Board continues to look to the public to define policing objectives and priorities in this City, incorporating community voices into our approach to ensuring community safety for members of all of Toronto’s communities, as we remain focused on transformation and innovation,” the Board’s Executive Director and Chief of Staff, Ryan Teschner, said in a news release.
Some of the ways in which the Service and Board have gathered input from Torontonians include the Board’s July 2020 virtual town hall meetings, monthly Board meetings, race-based data information sessions, community policing information sessions, independent public consultations for selecting the next Chief of Police, Community Policing Liaison Committees for each Division, and Community Consultative Committees.
