Image taken from RCMP dashcam video

By Mel Rothenburger

ARMCHAIR MAYOR

ROTHENBURGER: Defunding police wouldn’t cure what ails them

Jun 13, 2020 | 6:53 AM

BEING A COP these days must be a demoralizing job.

You train to protect people, and each day on the job you try to do that. It’s dangerous work. These days, though, you’re accused of hurting people instead, of being racist. People talk about “defunding” police.

One afternoon this week, the Kamloops detachment issued a detailed news release about a drug-trade takedown that yielded a yard-long list of weapons and an equally long list of charges against a suspect. Good old-fashioned police work — serving and protecting the public.

That evening, all the TV networks ran a dashcam video of Chief Allan Adam being tackled and punched during an arrest by RCMP officers outside a Fort McMurray casino.

There are too many of these videos. They seem to be coming out of nowhere since the one of George Floyd being killed by Minneapolis police officers a couple of weeks ago.

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A flame of discontent has been ignited across the continent and around the world that grows each day. Your moral authority is badly eroded, as are the trust and respect you once commanded.

Some want to shut you down. Calls of “defund” grow louder.

Just as there are fundamental misunderstandings about the meanings of “systemic” and “privileged” (as I wrote last week) there is a wide range of interpretations of what it means to defund police.

To some, it means doing away with police entirely. That kind of “defunding” is ludicrous, of course. A more rational view says police budgets should be reduced and reallocated to social services so police don’t deal with things like domestic abuse and mental health issues.

That might not directly diminish the racism but it would, at the least, reduce the number of incidents that lead to race-based violence.

But even that makes little sense upon examination. What would be the cost of taking away police resources and directing that money toward more street workers, counsellors, sociologists, housing? Filling one gap with diverted funding would create another. The next time there’s a drug-trade execution in our community, would reduced budgets hamper the investigation? The next time there’s an armed standoff would there be no Emergency Response Team to deal with it?

Would Thursday’s bust have been possible with fewer officers, less intel, less time to investigate?

Maybe the impact would be more subtle than that but it’s a certainty it would negatively affect public safety in as many ways as it would enhance it. If the city’s police budget was cut by even 10 per cent, that would be $3.2 million removed from enforcement. That could pay for a lot of street workers and counsellors but it would also take a lot of cops off the beat.

A year ago former Kamloops newspaper man Jack Knox, who now observes life in Victoria for the Times-Colonist, wrote about the City council there refusing to fill a $690,000 hole in the police department budget caused by the employer health tax.

So, the police department announced it could no longer afford to cover special events like Canada Day. It cut the front-desk hours at its offices and disbanded its crime-reduction unit. Calls to 911 started going unanswered. There was talk of increased stress, burnout and PTSD among over-worked police members.

In the 50 years I’ve been in and around Kamloops I’ve never once heard our RCMP detachment ask for less money and fewer officers when they go to City Hall for their annual budget request.

It’s not empire building; it’s higher population, higher crime rates and not enough officers to do the job. It’s about growing property crime, deadly drugs, deadlier guns, murders, robberies, home invasions, that sort of stuff.

It’s not supposed to be about expired licence plates, broken tail lights and passing counterfeit $20 bills.

Slashing police budgets isn’t an answer. More funding for social support without taking money away from policing is part of the answer. Refocusing of police responsibilities, better training (including better sensitivity training), more transparency, stronger consequences for racist acts, better co-ordination between police and other agencies, those are pieces of the answer.

Contemplating these things is not new at all. Back in November 2018 Coun. Mike O’Reilly asked that the City look into a report done in Kelowna that proposed special provincial constables — armed bylaws officers — deal with minor crimes. It was about the money — every new police constable costs the city about $200,000 a year including salary, benefits and equipment.

However, the discussion inevitably led to talk about using police resources to better advantage. I also remember several years ago the CO at the Kamloops detachment making the unilateral decision to eliminate community policing because he insisted he needed more officers on the front lines dealing with major crimes. Community policing is a system that emphasizes building trust with the public.

The thinking goes that if police are freed up from things like traffic tickets, wellness checks, shoplifting and mental health-related incidents, they could focus on the big stuff.

Creation of a tiered policing system is the way to go about it, and it’s still on the City’s radar. It could be part of a middle road approach that would redefine police responsibilities and, at the same time, enhance social supports. While that approach might serve to at least hold the line on police spending, and be more effective, overall it would cost more. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it; it may well be that we must do it.

Interestingly, by the way, O’Reilly has also mused about Kamloops needing its own anti-gang squad. There would surely be no room for that in a defunded police force.

The answers are expensive but they exist. Simplistic slogans like “defund police” aren’t going to get us there.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group.