POLICE WORTH EVERY PENNY

Some people just can't stop fussing about the police budget and it's
true that the increase will cost the average homeowner $36. Is it too
much? Maybe the better question is, are we getting value for the money?

The recent mass arrest of drug dealers downtown suggests that we are.
The situation in the ByWard Market area had gotten ridiculous with
people selling and smoking crack in public as if there were no law
against it. Or, at least, no law enforcement.

The problem of drug dealing downtown certainly isn't new, but the main
police response had been to suggest removing bus shelters and street
planters, places that gave the dealers somewhere to hang out.
Incidentally, the changes would have made the downtown less pleasant
for everyone else, too.

Under new management, the police have done what we pay them to do,
enforce the law. The city's new street crimes unit spent the last few
weeks observing the dealers and making drug buys. Once they had all
the information they needed, they arrested more than 60 people.

Believe it or not, one of the reasons police have been reluctant to
act in the past is because of concern over officer safety. It's not an
argument Chief Vern White accepts. While acknowledging that there is
risk in undercover drug operations, White says "our citizens were
facing the same risk every day."

Surely taking risks is what we train and equip police officers to do.
In the end, the risk was minimal. One officer had a knife pulled on
him when a dealer tried to rob him.

It's sometimes argued that there is no point in arresting drug dealers
because they will soon be back on the streets, and if they are not,
others will replace them. Some of those arrested have previous
criminal records and can look forward to substantial jail sentences,
White says.

Others will cycle back on to the streets, but the police know who they
are.

"They will continue to sell, we will continue to arrest," White says.
"This is the beginning, not the end."

The dealers could face a second level of jeopardy if they have been
collecting welfare payments. A drug dealing arrest puts a flag on a
welfare file. Welfare workers begin checking how much money the
accused dealer has in his bank account, if he has a car or any other
unexpected assets that he forgot to mention when applying for welfare.
Depending on the dollars involved, it could lead either to being cut
off welfare or to being charged with fraud.

This police chief has targeted the disorder downtown as his top
priority. It's difficult to argue with that. His predecessor thought
the public wanted our expensive police officers to focus on traffic
violations.

It's important to note that the crackdown on dealers is supported by
the people who run the downtown homeless shelters. They don't want
these dealers anywhere near their buildings. The dealers are
predators, and their prey is the people who use the social services
that are concentrated downtown.

The big drug sweep is a good example of what we should expect from our
police. They have identified a problem and dealt with it in a way that
only the police can. Human relations is part of any police officer's
job, but we don't pay them to be social workers. We pay them to fight
crime.

It's easier to support higher spending for a city service when it's
one that works. Compare police effectiveness to that of OC Transpo,
for example.

That's not to say that we need to give the police a blank cheque
because we like their work, but before calling for lower police costs,
it's important to know why they are going up. The biggest factor is
salary increases set by arbitration and thus beyond the control of our
police services board.

The single biggest driver of police numbers and cost is calls for
service. When people say that we should have fewer police because the
crime rate is going down, they seem to forget that it's not just
crimes that spark the demand for police. It's all those other things
where the public thinks the police should respond, whether there is
any crime or not. The police receive about 1,000 calls for service a
day, up more than 30 per cent from 2001. If we want to lower police
costs, the quickest way to do it is to be a little more judicious
before dialing 911.

Perhaps the most useful number to determine whether our police costs
are too high is the number of police officers per resident. Ottawa has
a lower ratio than any major Canadian city, ranking sixth in the
country. That's not Cadillac service.

Police spending has gone up substantially in each of the last several
years. That's reason enough to give the police budget careful
scrutiny. But let's not forget the concept of value for money. There
are encouraging signs that our police are delivering more of it.