TRUE CRIME, REAL COSTS

Crime is an easy target in an election campaign. Everyone agrees
there should be less of it. So candidates, pandering to that bias,
say we need more police. You can never have enough officers.

That's because there is crime around every corner, if you believed
people trying to get your vote. We need more police on the streets to
battle our crime epidemic. Look at Rideau Street. Drug dealers and
panhandlers everywhere. That must mean there is a big crime problem.
We must get tough on crime. And, of course, we must get tough on taxes.

What candidates don't tell you, or don't know, is that problems are
rarely as easily solved on the street as they are on the hustings.

In fact, Ottawa is a safe city. There are very few areas where you
would be uneasy walking at night. But not having a crime problem
doesn't get you elected. The first casualty in an election campaign
is the truth.

All this is by way of saying that Statistics Canada has reported that
Ottawa has a rate of 138 officers per 100,000 population. That's one
of the lowest ratios in the country, with but Kingston, Saguenay and
Sherbrooke having fewer officers per citizen among the country's major cities.

Why? Maybe it's because we don't have much crime. Ottawa has the
second-lowest homicide rate among those major cities while the
incidence of other crime here has risen only one per cent between
2004 and 2005. And that increase is because of a rise in property
offences, bail violations and mischief.

But even with our comparatively small police service, it is very
expensive. In 2004, a city report showed that the police budget had
risen 26 per cent since 2000, but the city budget had increased by
only 15 per cent. In 1995 the police budget comprised 7.5 per cent of
the property-tax bill. In 2004, it was 11 per cent.

As well, police salaries and benefits make up about 90 per cent of
the force's budget.

So candidates want more police on beats and tax freezes at the same
time. Good luck. And don't forget that the city auditor general went
through police operations and found they ran quite efficiently. So
where are the savings to be had?

And while the price of feeling safer takes up more room in the city
budget, municipal services such as ice pads, community centres,
soccer fields, recreation complexes and parks suffer. So too do some
social services. They are the way (and an inexpensive way) to stop
crime before you must call a police officer.

But in an election, easy answers resonate with voters.