POLICE SEEK ONTARIO'S HELP TO BEEF UP FORCE

Suburban Growth Spurs Need For 182 New Officers, Service Says

The Ottawa Police Service said yesterday it has formally applied for
provincial assistance to hire 182 urgently needed officers.

The force hopes to qualify under the province's "Safer Communities -- 1,000
Officers Partnership Program" to hire 90 more officers over the next three
years, as well as pay retroactively for the recent hiring of 92 officers.

Under the hiring program, 50 per cent of an officer's salary is covered by
the province, to a maximum of $35,000.

The city will know by Nov. 21. If the province agrees to pay for all 182
police positions being requested, the city would get $4.2 million in help.

During the last provincial election, Premier Dalton McGuinty promised 1,000
more police officers on Ontario streets by the end of four years.

Ottawa has been hiring officers and plans to hire more to cover rapidly
growing suburban neighbourhoods such as Riverside South, Barrhaven and
Orleans. Some of the officers will focus on problems such as youth crime,
marijuana grow operations, child pornography and child exploitation through
the Internet.

The former Conservative government had a program to help municipalities
hire more police, but Ottawa police officials believe they were
shortchanged, getting funding for 32 more officers when the police service
believed it should have been given help with 70 hires. Police spokesman
Martin Champoux said the department couldn't understand why the funding was
short under the Conservatives.

Earlier this year, the police service told council it expected it would
require an $11.2-million increase in its $174-million operating budget for
2006. With the province's assistance on hiring costs, the budget increase
would be about $8 million, or 4.5 per cent.

The police service says it needs to hire more officers to maintain a
reasonable ratio of police to residents, currently one officer for 744
citizens.

Public demands for service from city police are growing. In 2000, the force
handled 257,989 calls. Last year, it handled 361,463 calls in Ottawa,
including 76,655 classified as urgent. One recent initiative of the police
is to hire more officers to enforce long-neglected traffic violations.

Eighty-five per cent of the police service's costs are wages and benefits
and some of those costs -- retention bonuses ordered by a provincial labour
arbitrator, for example -- aren't under the control of Ottawa officials.
The police service has been seeing large budget increases for the last
several years, including a $15.2-million increase for this year. The police
service has a gross operating budget of $174 million this year and a staff
of 1,673.

In a recent interview, Councillor Michel Bellemare, a member of the police
services board, said police managers don't entirely understand why service
demands are increasing as much as they are. But he said there's great
reluctance to tamper with the budget of such an essential service as police.

"I don't think we know exactly what's going on. It's just growing and
growing and growing. The pressures on the police force are enormous."