(This column was published in the print edition of the North Shore News on Mar 19, 2003)
Vancouver cops consider bailing early
By Leo Knight
The pension issue in the news last week will have a dramatic effect on the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) in one way or another.
The story goes back nearly 50 years when the police and fire department were given a pension top-up called Supplemental Pension, essentially equivalent to an additional 30 per cent to differentiate the job they did from other city employees because they had a mandatory retirement age of 60 instead of 65.
Their main pension was indexed, but the top-up wasn't supposed to be.
Yet somehow it was. Recently an administrator noticed the problem and began looking for ways to claw it back.
It was decided to let officers retiring in this calendar year to keep it as it stood.
But for officers retiring in the next three years, that would not be the case.
They face an increasing reduction until the amount sits where it was originally intended.
While that may seem fair on the surface, for officers already planning their retirement, they face the loss of several hundred dollars a month from what they had planned on receiving.
Many are now considering their options, looking at the cost of early retirement, weighing pension penalty against the proposed claw back. And this is where it becomes very problematic for new VPD Chief Jamie Graham, a former North Vancouver RCMP superintendent.
The department is already short-handed. Many squads are already running at minimum staffing levels as the department struggles to recover from the significant manpower shortages they were hit with in the last five years.
I'm told there are about 175 senior police officers eligible for retirement this year. In the normal course of events many would not leave at their first eligibility date and continue serving the public. But with this new proposal staring them in the face, that now seems unlikely.
Vancouver police had planned on recruiting 120 new officers for this year, a figure representing a little over 10 per cent of their authorized strength. But, just on the face of it, that will leave them over 50 officers short just to cover retirement attrition let alone any other attrition factors.
The problem is further exacerbated when you consider how long it will take those 120 new hires to get trained and become sufficiently competent to be fully operational, deployable police officers. Add to that, any number of the 250 officers slated to retire in the next few years who may now opt for early retirement settling on the two per cent per year penalty
for leaving early, and the picture becomes bleak for the city and its new chief.
I should add this will also affect the Vancouver fire department in a similar, but not as dramatic manner. Likewise, North Vancouver District Fire and Rescue Services has about 20 per cent of its members who appear to be affected by this situation.
Chief Graham called for calm in a message to his members on Friday as they struggle to confront this and find ways to stall a potential mass exodus.
VPD spokeswoman Const. Sarah Bloor said: "We're simply advising members not to act with haste. We need to get the facts and get accurate numbers to make informed decisions."
Publicly, at least, the police and fire departments are saying they have been unable to confirm the information and are appealing to members to be patient.
But realistically the information is accurate insofar as the pension committee with representatives of all departments within the city has already had discussions on the matter.
VPD already cannot deal with anything other than urgent calls for service.
They don't even have the manpower to come to your home if you return to find it burgled.
You call to get a case number for insurance purposes and precious little investigation is actually done.
Over the past 20 years the department's policy has been changing with more and more crimes being added to the list they cannot respond to, from motor vehicle accidents without serious injury or death, to vehicle break-ins and now to residential burglaries.
The fraud section won't take on an investigation unless the loss is quite substantial. Not because they don't want to, but because they simply can't, they don't have the manpower.
Just as an aside, every member of the fraud section could retire this year as a result of the Supplemental Pension screw-up. Where will the expertise come from then to handle these complex investigations?
The RCMP is already hiring experienced police officers retiring from Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton. They give them a six-week training update in Regina and poof, they're Mounties. Municipal forces like Vancouver are faced with the possibility of having to contract back retired members simply to have the expertise to provide essential service.
This is all troubling. Vancouver has one of the highest ratios of police officers per population in Canada. Add to that Vancouver's place as a business centre with the influx of commuters not too mention the night life, sporting events, theatres and hundreds of thousands of non-residents visit the city daily.
Crime rates are rising; especially property crime and auto thefts not to mention the influx of crack houses, violent home invasions, flourishing organized crime and a gang war in the Indo-Canadian community that has already claimed more than 65 lives. The last thing the city needs now is a further shortage of police officers.
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