Ancestors

Toot

Written by Craig Sloss on 2024-12-01 at 21:36

In the #WaterlooRegion budget, the police are requesting a $24M tax increase based on claims that they do not have the capacity to meet their workload demands. Publicly-available occurrence data shows that the biggest drivers of police workload can be prevented by greater investments in the non-police portions of the budget. (An “occurrence” is a call for service, and numbers represent the total time spent responding to the call.) (1/6)

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Descendants

Written by Craig Sloss on 2024-12-01 at 21:37

In 2023, the police spent over 33K hours responding to domestic dispute calls. The next highest category, “proactive initiative / project”, isn’t even close, at 22K hours. Next are two types of calls related to mental health “compassionate to locate” — essentially a wellness check — at 18K hours, and calls that the police refer to as “mentally ill” at 15K. Time spent responding to these calls has steadily increased since 2020. (2/6)

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Written by Craig Sloss on 2024-12-01 at 21:39

In 2023, the police spent an average of 326 minutes on each “domestic dispute” call, and an average of 242 minutes on each call that the police refer to as “mentally ill”. By comparison, a call for an arrest averaged 215 minutes. By increasing spending for domestic violence prevention and mental health, #WaterlooRegion can both address the underlying problems, and reduce the factors driving police-related tax increases. (3/6)

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Written by Craig Sloss on 2024-12-01 at 21:40

Unfortunately, instead of taking an approach that solves multiple problems at once, #WaterlooRegion Council is considering cuts on the non-police budget that will make the situation worse. Examples include cuts to mental health counselling for individuals on the Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program, and cuts to “items necessary for daily living” for individuals on these programs. (4/6) https://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/regional-government/resources/Budget/Options-to-achieve-Councils-2025-Budget-Guideline---01-19.pdf

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Written by Craig Sloss on 2024-12-01 at 21:41

These cuts are on top of a broader failure to build sufficient capacity to provide emergency shelter for individuals experiencing domestic violence, especially the lack of capacity in shelters catering to women, transgender, and gender diverse individuals. The Region has also failed to adopt fully police-free responses to mental health crises, despite the fact that other cities have already modelled this approach for us. (5/6)

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Written by Craig Sloss on 2024-12-01 at 21:41

The #WaterlooRegion Council has a budget feedback meeting on December 3. Information about how to sign up to delegate, or how to e-mail Council, is available at this website. (6/6) https://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/regional-government/communicate-with-council.aspx#:~:text=If%20you%20do%20not%20know,resolved%20at%20the%20staff%20level.

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