SYDNEY, N.S. — The Cape Breton Regional Police Service is up for review.
CBRM chief financial officer Jennifer Campbell said the municipality plans to proceed with a formal review of the service’s current and projected policing costs. The analysis was one of numerous recommendations in the recently-released final report of an independent study into the future viability of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality.
The $224,000 province-funded study that was conducted by accounting firm Grant Thornton pointed out that the Cape Breton police service has some 200 officers who serve an aging and declining population. For comparison, the study noted that Cape Breton has 223 officers per 100,000 people, while the Halifax Regional Municipality has 165 officers per 100,000 people.
The Cape Breton police service is operating on a 2019-2020 budget of $27.6 million, which represents about 18 per cent of the municipality’s $150.5-million operating budget. More than 90 per cent of the police budget is allocated for wages.
“As a service that is largely driven by the number of residents, with costs driven primarily by wages, a continued decline in population compounded by an increasing aging population will not strengthen the case for current expenditure and staffing levels going forward and should therefore be further explored,” Campbell told the CBRM’s police commission during a Tuesday meeting at city hall.
“But such information is subject to interpretation and assumptions and it is important to ensure that when comparing the CBRPS to other jurisdictions that relevant, accurate and comparable data is applied.”
Campbell said the municipality will hire a consultant to work with police management and CBRM senior staff to further identify and evaluate options to make the police service more efficient.
Deputy Police Chief Robert Walsh, who filled in for an under-the-weather Chief Peter McIsaac, said the police service welcomes the review.
“We absolutely understand and respect the financial challenges that the municipality is facing, especially as it tries to deliver the services that its citizens deserve, and we’ll certainly engage in the review as part of the recommendation,” he said.
“We would hope it would be done by somebody with the appropriate background and experience in policing to assist our management team in identifying potential efficiencies moving forward.”
Ironically, word of the review came on the same day that Walsh told the police commission that crime rates in the CBRM are continuing to decline.
“We’re down approximately 30 per cent over the past five years, especially in areas such as violent crime, which is indicative to me that we are providing a quality level of service to the citizens,” said Walsh, who added that only 20-30 per cent of police work is captured in crime statistics.
“If you think about things like emergency response, crowd control, community education, crime prevention, victims support, training requirements, major investigations, accountabilities and public safety, you can see that crime stats don’t completely reflect the impact that police have on community safety and well-being.”
Walsh also said he was pleased that the viability study’s findings showed that CBRM residents have a high level of confidence in the local police force.
But one area of concern identified by the viability study and acknowledged by the police service is the high number of officers who are off on leave at any given time, a number Walsh said is usually between 30 and 40 officers.
“That’s indicative of an aging police force, but we are currently working with our human resources department to address some of these challenges through changes to our LTD (long term disability) program and through recruitment,” said Walsh.
The deputy chief also expressed hope that the upcoming review acknowledges the unique position of the local force which has ongoing partnerships with two First Nations, the department of education and the RCMP.
Walsh noted that 166 of the police service’s 200 officers are funded by the CBRM. He said the remainder are employed through partnerships, including the province’s Boots on the Street program ($1.9 million for 19 officers) and the joint federal and provincial funded Membertou policing initiative ($900,00 for six officers and one support staffer).
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