Montreal police officers will be called upon to use their smart phones as a body camera, predicts the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), whose overtime spending jumped last year against the backdrop of the upsurge in acts of gun violence.
The SPVM presented the details of its operating budget to elected members of the City’s Finance and Administration Commission on Thursday evening, which is studying the city’s 2022 budget these days. The police force then evoked its intention to carry out this year “a demonstration of technological feasibility of integration of the portable camera with the smart phones”.
“We are taking a technological test, given that we are trying to be efficient and effective in the use of taxpayers’ money,” said the director of the SPVM, Sylvain Caron. “We will see what the results of this technological test will be, and then see if we make a deployment,” he added, without however committing to the test taking place by the end of the year. ‘year.
This proposal comes in a context where the SPVM’s spending in 2021 greatly exceeded the initial budget, which was $ 679 million, to instead reach $ 733 million. By first asking its police to use their smart phone as a portable camera, the SPVM is therefore opting for an economical formula. This project should cost $ 437,000, foresees the police force, or a fraction of the sum of approximately $ 17 million that the City has planned to spend over the next 10 years to provide all the city’s police officers with portable cameras and solve the various technological problems that this project would entail.
“Find me a single police force that has equipped its police with smart phones as body cameras,” replied the Duty Thursday evening the vice-president of the Public Security Commission and elected from Ensemble Montreal, Abdelhaq Sari. “We are in a world of unicorns”, adds the member of the opposition, who considers that this proposal “lacks rigor”.
A growing budget
For 2022, the SPVM’s budget will reach $ 724.1 million. This is 45 million more than the amount forecast last year. A situation disputed by several residents, who had sent written questions to elected officials in anticipation of this virtual presentation. Some stressed that, in their opinion, priority should be given to funding community organizations that contribute to crime prevention.
“It is wrong to say that we must increase the subsidies to community services by cutting the budget [du SPVM]. We have to do both. In the budget, that is exactly the intention of this administration. We have doubled the aid to the community sector for new programs that will be put in place this year, ”replied the City’s Director General, Serge Lamontagne, earlier today. The official thus insisted on the importance for Montreal of having a “strong” police force to tackle armed violence in the metropolis while providing good support to community organizations.
“Since 2019, the police service has been facing an extraordinary situation in terms of violence by firearms”, also recalled the director of the SPVM. The latter also pointed out that per capita, Montreal police officers are the least expensive for taxpayers, compared to the cities of Toronto, Calgary and Winnipeg.
“We look good, but the fact remains that the costs are enormous,” admitted Mr. Caron. Especially since the SPVM is the police force among these four cities with the most police officers per 100,000 inhabitants, or 217, in 2020.
“We are trying by all means to respect citizens’ ability to pay, but public security, obviously, is very expensive, with the payroll and all the equipment required to deal with the situation,” added Mr. Caron. .
Exhausted police officers
The presentation document of around thirty pages created by the SPVM reports a major jump in spending allocated to the payment of overtime last year, mainly due to the “massive mobilization of police resources in the fight against violence. by firearms ”through various specialized teams. Thus, last year, nearly $ 55 million was disbursed for this purpose, an increase of more than 50% compared to 2020. A situation which shows the importance of accelerating the hiring of new police officers, Sari believes.
“We have a problem at the SPVM to cover the territory,” said the elected representative of Ensemble Montreal. The latter also fears that the lack of manpower weighs on the shoulders of the police officers currently on duty. “They are tired, they are down,” says Sari.
Moreover, the data collected by the police force show a 26% increase in work accidents “with lost time” reported during the first three quarters of 2021, compared to the previous year. 6,307 working days were thus lost last year, which represents an increase of 17% compared to 2020. “The rate of absenteeism” is high at the SPVM, confirmed Mr. Caron.
The director of the SPVM also estimated that 60 police officers would be added “net” to the police force once retirements are taken into account, which is significantly less than what the mayoress, Valérie Plante, had promised during the election campaign.