(This column was published in the North Shore News on April 2, 2003)
Few police and much work
By Leo Knight
THE Vancouver Police Department is in serious trouble.
Not the sort of trouble that arises from scandal or mismanagement, but the sort that comes from having too few resources and too much to do.
A couple of weeks ago, I described the impending problems emanating from the decades old bureaucratic error which will dramatically affect pensions received by senior police officers looking at retirement. The solution to repair the problem will likely result in the premature retirement of over 100 additional officers in the next two years.
There is going to be attrition of roughly 20 per cent of the department in the next year, which is bad enough. But those 20 per cent represent over 50 percent of the collective experience available within the police department. Current projections will see Vancouver police only able to address about half that through recruiting and training.
But remember these will be new, young recruits fresh out of training, hardly an appropriate replacement for a seasoned, experienced police officer taking to early retirement.
On Friday, police Chief Jamie Graham tabled a document seeking additional funding for more resources.
But not just for deployable police officers, but also for a significant increase in civilian staff.
In simple terms, the job has become much more complex over the course of the past decade largely due to superior court decisions which have dramatically affected the enforcement branch of the justice system.
For example, in the 1980s, an impaired driving investigation would take a police officer approximately two hours to conduct and complete. In 2003, that same case will take the officer five to eight hours to complete.
There are a number of higher court decisions that have had some effect on how that police officer handles this simplest of investigations. But, the major one is a 1991 Supreme Court of Canada decision titled Regina versus Stintchcombe, which was an appeal of an Alberta Court of Appeal decision.
Stintchcombe, it may come as no surprise, was a lawyer, who faced breach of trust and fraud charges. He had been convicted all the way up the ladder until it came to the Supremes. They overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial.
The issue was fought over disclosure by the Crown to the defence of all documentation within an investigation not as held previously, "relevant" information.
What this has created in real terms is a doubling or tripling of the time it takes to prepare a case for submission to the Crown. Every page of notes, every scrap of paper, every statement taken from witnesses whether or not they saw or know anything has to be dutifully copied and presented along with the Report to Crown Counsel.
Where the rubber hits the road in this, as an example, is when a supervising sergeant is called by one of his squad and advised they have an impaired driver. If there is no accident, the supervisor often, if not always, advises the officer to issue a roadside suspension and clear the call.
The choice is simple for the supervisor. Already under-strength, five to eight hours spent on a relatively minor offence is simply not worth the loss of that officer from the street for the length of time it will take to complete the paperwork. He gets the drunk off the road and moves on to the next problem.
But the problem then comes, as an example, from that same drunk waiting until after the officer has cleared the scene and returning to his parked vehicle and heading out to wreak havoc on the innocents. Or indeed, the offender doesn't see any meaningful consequence for the transgression. Not that court is in any way meaningful these days, but it's more than a simple 24-hour licence suspension.
Now, take that situation and apply it to more complex investigations: rape, murder, conspiracy, robbery, home invasion, extortion, all of which are plentiful in our fair city and you begin to see the issue. Imagine an investigation where a wiretap is used. Crown may only want to introduce a few conversations into evidence, but every single hour of taped
conversations must be transcribed and provided to the defence.
The police chief has asked for an additional 27 civilian positions to help with the increased paperwork, releasing police officers onto the streets where they belong. This will add $1.3 million to the policing budget.
He has also asked for an additional $2.3 million to fund the overtime required to tackle the festering sore that is the Downtown Eastside. He has suggested a three part: short-term, medium-term and long-term plan to control the world's only open-air drug bazaar.
The Vancouver Province ran a poll on its Web site Monday asking readers whether the additional funding requested by Chief Graham should be approved. A strong 71 per cent were in favour. Likely because most of these people are fed up with being victims of crime and want something done.
The request to Vancouver City council by Graham is reasonable, albeit insufficient given the pension debacle. A failure by the COPE-dominated council to support the police chief's request would be the wrong message indeed to the citizens of the City of Vancouver and the hundreds of thousands of others in the Lower Mainland who travel there every day.
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