Toronto Police are about to boost their ranks in “unprecedented” fashion.
Recommended Videos
The Toronto Police Services Board has agreed to a five-year hiring plan to boost the number of officers per 100,000 people across the city, Chief Myron Demkiw and Councillor Shelley Carroll said Tuesday during a news conference at headquarters.
“This level of multi-year committment is unprecedented,” Demkiw said. “Let me be clear: In my view as the chief, this is a historic moment.
“Today is truly a good day and a step toward building in hiring certainty for our members — and, very importantly, for the safety of our city.”
Carroll, who serves on the police board and chairs the city’s budget committee, said the plan will see a “front-end loading” of new hires with the force committing to the full provincial training allocation in 2025 and 2026. That means in each of those years, four full classes of 90 officers will join the force.
The board plans to continue boosting the number of officers per capita in the final three years of the deal depending on budget resources.
The Don Valley North councillor cited the need to boost the “cop-to-pop” ratio — the number of officers per 100,000 people — which she said was one of the lowest compared to other North American cities, while also helping the force cover retirements and prepare for further population growth.
“We do agree in principle that we need to keep improving that ratio,” she said. “I think that should come as good news to communities. We have so many things that face our city, special projects that need to be staffed up.”
Carroll specifically mentioned hate crimes, auto thefts and domestic violence as some of the areas where officers are facing increased pressure.
“We just spent most of the morning in the police board meeting talking about an increase in intimate partner violence throughout the city and we’ve seen it increase over the last few years,” she said. “That’s a very complex thing for police officers to deal with in communities and they need all hands to the pumps.”
Demkiw said the agreement provides the force with “tangible, understandable numbers” when it comes to beefing up its ranks. The number of officers in Toronto has been on a steady decline since 2010, when the “cop-to-pop” ratio was 213.6 per 100,000 people, according to Statista.com.
The ratio has been floating between the low to high 160s — peaking at 170.3 in 2021 — in the last five years that data was available, ending in 2023.
The news comes after tense negotiations between police officials and councillors last year ended with the service receiving an extra $20 million in its $1.2-billion budget, almost three times more than what was initially recommended by Mayor Olivia Chow and city staff.
RECOMMENDED VIDEO
The budget boost, however, came with the expectation that police brass would focus on cutting wait times for the highest priority calls, which last year averaged about 22 minutes. Demkiw said wait times for those calls are down to about 17 minutes this year and police will continue to monitor the issue “closely.”
Carroll, meanwhile, said they will get a better understanding of the “hard numbers” of the hiring plan when the police board’s budget subcommittee meets on Nov. 27 before the full budget is adopted in December.
But compared to past budgets, she said, they have dealt with the “biggest and most important part first.
“That should be the first part of the conversation, that’s what’s different here this year,” Carroll said. “Let’s decide what we want to be happening in our communities, what forces we want on the ground and then we’ll figure out how to surround them with the supports they need and stay within our targets.”