Members of the Guelph Police Service are regular people doing a difficult job under the extraodinary circumstances of COVID-19, says Guelph's police chief.
Last week, the Guelph Police Service surpassed 30,000 calls for service since the beginning of the pandemic.
“The vast majority of what we do is in person, dealing with our community. It’s not like it can be done virtually,” said Gord Cobey, chief of Guelph Police Service.
“You can imagine since March 12 all of the personal and family health concerns, all of the unknowns and the scariness of the beginning of the pandemic, and then layer on all of the other conversations we have had in recent weeks. It’s been a lot on our folks in the last six months.”
Those conversations include growing anti-police sentiment that has continued in response to incidents in the United States and Canada in which police were involved in the deaths of Black or Indigenous people, including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Regis Korchinski-Paquet and Rodney Levi , among others.
On June 6, a march staged in support of the Black Lives Matter movement attracted more than 5,000 participants and demonstrators symbolically passed the Guelph Police Headquarters on the route.
Cobey lauded the efforts of the march’s organizers.
“I think overall the event on June 6 was very successful,” he said. “I think we are all having much-needed conversations that we weren’t having before that. As a community, I think people acknowledge that racism and prejudice exist and they shouldn’t.”
Cobey said police officers are not perfect, but they want to learn and grow and change.
“There is no doubt the sentiment around policing, in general, has had a big effect on our folks,” said Cobey. “Having said that, we have received so many calls, emails and had members of the public who have come personally to say ‘thank you’ and recognize what it has been like for (Guelph Police) in the last few months.”
“We are just human beings doing a really tough job,” he added.
Cobey said members of the Guelph Police have shown incredible resilience in the face of COVID-19.
“Our folks come to work every day, they don’t know the call they are going to be responding to. Each call can be a very dynamic and potentially dangerous situation,” said Cobey.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Guelph Police initiated the downtown resource officer program — four officers who are dedicated to the downtown core.
Renovations have also continued at the Guelph Police Headquarters, which has been closed to the public throughout the pandemic, although it is open for emergency walk-ins on a 24-hour basis.
Although the Guelph Police has lost some revenue streams like background records checks and incurred a number of unexpected expenses due to COVID-19, including the purchasing of personal protective equipment and modifying workspaces for physical distancing, Cobey said the department is expected to remain within its budget this year.
“From the very beginning we have been very mindful of the fact that ours is a tax-supported budget and all of of our decisions have been made being respectful of that,” said Cobey. “Despite any expenses and revenue losses, we are absolutely based on the information we have now, projecting we will certainly be within our allotted budget this year.”
In face of calls to defund the police, Cobey said next year’s budget is currently being worked on.
“We are right in the midst of looking into all of our business units and stuff. It’s probably premature for me to predict what that is going to look like, but I think it’s really important — like every other part of the city — we are very mindful of the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, our response to that and the impact that has had on the whole community,” said Cobey.
