POLICE CHIEF HAS TO LIVE WITHIN HIS BUDGETS

Other City Services Will Be Squeezed Financially To Make Up For Jamie
Graham's Overspending

Vancouver Police Chief Jamie Graham will stand before Vancouver city
council today to explain why he has overspent his annual budget by a
record $5 million.

His free-handed spending of public money contravenes both the
Vancouver Charter and the Police Act, which do not allow police to
spend funds which have not been authorized in advance.

But far from being contrite, Graham has gone on the
offensive.

Last week, he set the tone for today's session with the city's elected
representatives by telling the media the city is in a state of crisis.
The thin blue line is getting thinner, he said, and he has taken it
upon himself to spend whatever it takes, in his opinion, to stave off
the collapse of civil society.

A skilled marketer, he promises revelations of just how bad things are
in a "very startling" report which the Vancouver police department
will release in the next couple of months.

City council is not unaware of the situation in which the police find
themselves. The city provided an extra $10 million to help police deal
with staff shortages caused by the mass retirement of 140 officers
last year, as well as extra costs for policing late-night bar openings
and the city's supervised drug-injection site.

Nevertheless, the police have overspent this year's budget of $140
million, and in doing so have pushed the city into the possibility of
a year-end deficit of $2 million. This means any hope of breaking
even, let alone achieving the overall budgeted surplus of $3 million,
depends on other city departments -- presumably equally deserving of
their allotment of taxpayer dollars -- being squeezed to find the
extra money Graham has spent.

Policing already accounts for more than one dollar out of every five
the city collects, and council is often sandbagged by police
overspending at its annual autumn review of finances. The red ink for
the blue line has ranged from $835,000 in 1995 to $3.4 million in 2003.

Council and city staff are understandably concerned. Coun. Tim Louis,
chair of the city's budget committee, says the police have been
keeping their free-spending ways quiet, and he, for one, has had
enough of it. He says his staff haven't been seeing monthly financial
statements from the police, and he plans to tell them to file such
statements like every other city department.

In defence of his overspending, an unrepentant Graham says he will
never compromise the safety of Vancouver citizens "to save money, or
for any other reason." He says the VPD is being fiscally responsible
by maximizing the effectiveness of its current resources to ensure
public safety. That, apparently, comes ahead of the public budgetary
process.

That was the case last year too, when council refused to chip in an
extra $2.3 million for the controversial crackdown on open
drug-dealing at Main and Hastings. Councillors warned police that they
didn't want to see a deficit at the end of the year to cover the
funding that had been refused. Nonetheless, the final figure was over
the line by that amount-- and another $1.1 million to boot.

No one is suggesting Graham is inventing bogeymen -- Vancouver is a
big city, with big-city problems -- and the police might well be
underfunded. But the proper way to seek more funding is to convince
city council with compelling arguments, rather than by simply ignoring
the budget council approves.

When Graham makes his case to his political masters, it would behoove
him to show them the same civil regard that his officers and staff
work so hard to uphold throughout the city.