(Prime Time Crime exclusive May 28, 2006)
What price justice?
By Leo Knight
Detectives in the Vancouver Police Department are being hampered in conducting their investigations and their frustration is palpable.
Following several high-profile cases, most notably the kidnapping of Graham McMynn, the Investigative Division of VPD has been severely limited in what can be spent from their severely depleted overtime budget.
Deputy Chief Bob Rich explains, “We have had extraordinary investigative expenses this year and so we have had to make sure we do all we can to balance that by limiting spending in other areas. That is prudent fiscal management.”
But where the rubber hits the road in that fiscal management, without a further infusion of cash from government, city and provincial, the detectives in VPD have been severely curtailed on all overtime.
“God forbid, don’t get shot, murdered or raped on the weekend,” said one frustrated, veteran Detective.
“If we can’t work a case and give it 100 per cent, what’s the point?” shrugged one homicide cop.
The problem is particularly poignant and frustrating for the Detectives who work in Homicide. It’s often said that a homicide investigator speaks for those who can no longer speak for themselves. And the men and women who earn their daily crust as the “Murder Police” take that very seriously.
Typically, in a homicide case the first 24-48 hours are critical for investigators. The detectives assigned to the file will go around the clock, without sleep during those crucial hours, putting together as much evidence as possible. The results achieved in those first hours once a body has been discovered, are often the difference between taking a murderer off the street or a case going cold.
In the past, if VPD had an extraordinarily busy year, they would be able to go to either City Council for a budget top-up, or apply to have their investigation funded out of the Police Services division of the Solicitor General’s ministry. This is typical in multi-jurisdictional cases or complex high-profile files like when Bindy Johal and the Dosanjh brothers had their very public and bloody war.
For whatever reason, neither level of government is stepping up to the plate this time leaving the Vancouver Police in a very difficult position.
VPD, as an organization, has been looking at the issue of overtime for the past couple of years. Overtime is a significant and largely unavoidable, aspect to every police budget. To their credit, Chief Jaime Graham and his senior officers have been working hard to reduce overtime costs to the city.
In 2005, through various initiatives, the Vancouver Police Department managed a reduction in operational, non-recoverable overtime, to $3,343,636 down from $6,587,115 in 2004. This year’s budget called for operational overtime to be $4,395,266.
Things seemed like they were going swimmingly and in January the Police Board passed a new monitoring and implementation policy for the Department to manage their overtime.
The budget started to take a kicking with a series of high-profile home invasion cases and then got shot to hell when Graham McMynn was kidnapped. Every possible resource the police could throw into that investigation was exhausted, including the budget.
The police want to ensure the public knows that emergency services are not being affected and the safety of the public is paramount. Deputy Chief Bob Rich told The Province, “We will never sacrifice the public’s safety to save money.”
VPD management are trying to find the money to fund necessary operational investigative overtime, but so far, no dice. And the result? Seasoned investigators must sit on their hands and take weekends off instead of going after murderers and rapists. They can only do that between nine and five.
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