The head of the Toronto Police union says he told the Ministry of Labour that what he describes as the chronic understaffing of the police service constitutes a workplace safety issue.
Toronto Police Association President Mike McCormack says he and other uniformed police have told the province that the current complement of uniformed officers cannot handle the number of calls for service generated in the city, and the situation is leading to burnout, officers taking early retirement, or leaving to work in other services.
“We are meeting with and have been meeting with the Ministry of Labour over the last couple of months because our officers have raised this as an officer safety and a public safety concern,” McCormack told CP24.
The complaints come as gun violence spiked in Toronto over the weekend, with 16 people shot between Friday night and Monday night in 11 separate shooting occurrences.
Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders said the service would respond to the spike in shootings by redeploying officers and adding more on the overnight shift from specialized units formed to combat gangs and ensure public safety.
“These are folks that I have that can work anywhere across the city. We look at the city as a whole and not as 17 different compartments the way (McCormack) looks at it, and we say ‘where are the big issues right now, where do we have to go’,” Saunders said.
But McCormack questioned where the redeployment would come from, as the service has 900 fewer officers than it did in 2010.
“Where are you going to get the resources when we’re down 900 officers from where we were in 2010,” he said.
The Toronto Police Service had 5,600 sworn officers in 2010 and will have an average of 4,730 in 2019, according to the most recent budget request presented to city council.
Saunders countered that the service must reform its scheduling process, which he said it 37 years-old, in order to allow more officers to be in the field when gun crime is mostly likely to occur.
