Saskatoon police face challenges dealing with an increase in crime

Despite having some of the highest crime rates in the country, Saskatoon has among the lowest number of front line police officers.

Saskatoon has just 173 police per 100,000 people. The only major Canadian city with a lower amount is Regina at 171.

At the same time Stats Canada shows that in 2018 Saskatoon had the fourth most crime among Canadian cities with a Crime Severity Index (CSI) score of 118. As a comparison, Vancouver has 198 officers per 100,000 people and a CSI score of 84.

“We need bodies because not only are we the shortest but we also have the most severe crime,” said Dean Pringle, president of the Saskatoon Police Association.

“So it’s a bit of a double whammy for us. We don’t have enough staff but we are faced with the highest crime rates, really in the country, in Saskatoon and Regina.”

Pringle places the blame for this problem on inadequate funding and the recruitment of front line police officers that hasn’t kept up with the growth of the city.

“As the city grows the need for services grows too. Policing costs what it costs and I don’t think we can question it. I think the association sees it as a pretty simple concept,” he said.

“I think the citizens would probably agree too, and I think they would probably think we are adding capacity. But simply put, we don’t have the capacity to police the city properly.”

Looking at the numbers, Pringle says Saskatoon needs 36 more officers right now just to be at the same level as Edmonton. Another seven will need to be hired next year to keep up with the growth of the city.

“It gets really problematic if we don’t keep up because then we end up in this position where we are so far behind how do we possibly afford to hire that many new officers,” he said.

According to Pringle, hiring those 36 officers would help tremendously with cutting down on fatigue and burnout among them.

“That would be nine officers per shift. That is such a good shot in the arm. That’s four, maybe five cars more per night shift on duty and that’s going to make a huge difference,” he said.

“If we had an extra four or five cars on the night shift I can’t tell you how much that would benefit everybody. Right now our members are just going call to call to call, there’s no downtime and they’re getting burnt out.”

Police Chief, Troy Cooper agrees that the city could use more front line police officers. But until then he says the police have to find other ways to manage the workload.

“I think we are asking for more police officers. We haven’t been able to keep up actually with the call volumes that are increasing over time. We know we have a nine per cent increase in the dispatched calls over the last five years,” he said.

“If we don’t have them and we haven’t been able to keep pace with that as the city grows then we need to turn to our partners and we need to look for more efficient ways to do things and I think one of the most efficient things we can do is work together collaboratively.”