During the Guelph Police Services Board meeting Thursday, Chief Gord Cobey said he’s received the most positive feedback for the downtown policing initiative than any other during his time with the service.
Yet, it likely won’t continue – at least, not in the same way it is now.
Since April, the program has seen two additional officers patrolling downtown between 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. when resources allowed. Earlier this month, it was extended into the fall after receiving mostly positive reviews.
But the service just doesn't have the resources to keep it going, Cobey said.
The $260,000 required for the program was funded by a police operating reserve fund, and required a good deal of overtime work from officers.
“We don’t have the resources for this,” Cobey said. “We know it’s not sustainable to run an initiative like this indefinitely on overtime. We can’t ask members to do this on their days off indefinitely.”
To continue the project permanently would require a unit of eight or more people, and “would be very expensive,” he said.
Instead, they’re looking into “having properly resourced platoons, to always ensure an active presence downtown” in next year’s budget.
However, what that might look like remains unclear for the time being.
“We don’t have a budget for next year. So we have to see what allocation we get for human resources for 2024 to 2027 before we can commit to any kind of deployment in the downtown area, or anywhere else for that matter” said Deputy Chief Daryl Goetz in an interview.
The funding will continue the program until the end of October, at which time the GPS will “have to assess what resources we have to continue any kind of program down there,” he said.
Goetz said they likely won’t know until the end of the year, after the budget is approved.
“Our first hurdle is trying to figure out what resources we can get within the budget, and then we’ll assess how to deploy them from there effectively,” Goetz said.
That doesn’t mean there won’t be a police presence downtown, though. Typically there is one officer for each of the four platoons assigned downtown for 24/7 coverage, as well as a downtown resource officer.
“However, those officers take calls for service, so their presence gets diminished,” he said. “The whole purpose of the overtime officers was to make sure they’re there.”
Goetz said those officers will still be downtown, “it just won’t be as much of a presence.”
“But our goal would be to have a stronger presence in the downtown than just those officers,” he said.
