Author Archives: Menno Zacharias

Fantasy Island

Remember Fantasy Island?

Tattoo:  “Look boss, de plane, de plane!”

Mr. Roarke:  “No Tattoo, that is not de plane.  That is de Winnipeg Police Helicopter.”

The Winnipeg Police Helicopter,  we are told,  is now operational.

The on time criteria has not been met as it is about 5 months behind schedule.   No word yet as to whether it is on budget.

However, step aside, all ye naysayers:  the Police Service has come up with yet another potential use for the helicopter.

When it is not busy  rescuing elderly confused males lost in the Assiniboine Park Forest, it will be used to fight the anticipated 2011 flood.  Will it be used to deliver sand bags?  No, it is too small for that.  Will it be used to pluck people from the rooftops of their houses?  No, it’s not equipped for that.

What will it do during the flood?

Seeing as it is jointly funded by the city and the province, it could be used to take the mayor and the premier on “rides” so they could view the devastation from topside.  I’m not sure what the protocol is in terms of who has first dibs – the city because it bought the helicopter; or, the province because it pays for the pilot and the fuel.  But I’m sure they will work that out.

In any event, can you visualize this:  the Winnipeg Police helicopter, just a speck in the sky, approaches the flood-way gates where a throng of reporters are waiting.  The helicopter lands, and the mayor and/or the premier get out quickly before the rotor blades stop turning (this allows their hair to get messed so they look like action heroes).  They greet everyone, thank them for coming and launch into a speech describing the great things they are doing to protect Manitobans from devastation.  Then,  quickly back into the helicopter to save us from something else.

Great photo-op I agree but, at several thousand dollars an hour, a bit of an expensive ride.

Lets get real, this is Winnipeg not Fantasy Island.  We have buses not light rail, we have the Moose not the Jets;  the Blue Jays visited once but our everyday fare is the  Goldeyes;  and finally, we have Sam, not a visionary.

Enjoy the ride Sam and as always send us the bill – in one way or another, you always do.

Province Quashes Warrants

Quite apart from the core issue, which is whether the Province should have quashed old outstanding warrants in the first place, there is another issue.

How many warrants were quashed,  for what types of offences,  and why is the government reluctant to disclose that information?

The province is taking the position they don’t know how many cases this purge involved and  that it would be expensive and time-consuming to make that determination.

I believe the reason is not a time and money issue.  I believe the province does not want to share the information so as to  (hopefully) avoid a political fire storm.

Why do I believe that it’s not a time and money issue?  Because I believe a list already exists.

Outstanding warrants are entered on the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) system so that if police encounter a wanted person they can execute the warrant.  So….at the time that the warrants were quashed, the Province would (or should) have provided  Winnipeg Police and RCMP with lists of the names of accused persons whose warrants were quashed in order that police could remove them from CPIC.  The police would need to do this to ensure persons no longer wanted on warrants are not unnecessarily arrested.  Unnecessary arrests could create a liability issue; if not for police, certainly for the province.

Such lists were provided to police, right?

If not, they should be, and quickly.

Adding 58 Positions Will Reduce Police Overtime

Not!

As councillors were falling over themselves to support the addition of 58 positions to the complement of the  Winnipeg Police Service they cited a variety of reasons why they thought it was a good move.

One, that I heard several times and which was even tacitly supported by the Mayor despite the fact he knows or should know it is false, is that the additional positions will reduce overtime.

Intuitively it seems reasonable to assume that as more officers are added, overtime expenditures should go down.

In order to truly appreciate the impact of an additional  58 positions one must consider two things:  under what circumstances is police overtime generated, and how will the 58 new positions be deployed.

Police Overtime 101

Officers assigned to administrative duties, and inside (not on the street) supervisory roles have very limited opportunity to generate overtime.  This is why when you look at the compensation disclosure documents you will see constables drawing higher pay cheques than Patrol Sergeants, Staff Sergeants and in some cases even Inspectors.

Categorization of Overtime

Overtime falls in a numbers of distinct categories:

1. Hold-over of uniform personnel – The Duty Inspector has the authority to extend officers’ shifts to address a backlog of high priority calls waiting in the dispatch queue.

2.  Call Backs – The Collective agreement between the City and the union requires that each of the 3 shifts (day, evening and midnight) start with a minimum deployment of  27  2-officer units.  In situations where a shift is short of staff due either to sick leave, temporary assignment or the like, Sergeants must try to ‘borrow’ officers from another division.  If no other divisions have surplus officers, off duty officers are called out at the overtime rate to work a regular shift.

3.  Report Writing –  In some situations arrests are made close to the end of an officer’s shift.  In circumstances  where either due to necessity or policy, the report must be completed prior to the officer retiring from duty.

4.  Ongoing Investigations –  There are some instances where, due to the nature of the investigation (i.e. homicides), handing off the investigation to other officers at the end of the shift is not feasible.  Additional officers may be assigned to work with by the original officers who are kept on at overtime rates to ensure the continuity of the investigation.

5.  Operational Projects –  Projects where a particular group or a particular activity is being targeted are “gas guzzlers” in terms of overtime consumption.  Officers assigned to projects need to work flexible hours in keeping with the hours being kept by the target(s).  Many projects require 24 hours surveillance for extended periods of time. Mobile surveillance of a single target on a 24 hours a day basis can require up to 14 officers depending on how surveillance conscious the target is.

6.  Court – A substantial percentage of the police overtime budget is consumed by officers attending court on their days off or upon conclusion of their shift.    Despite efforts such as the Court Overtime Reduction Project, court attendance still eats up vast amounts of overtime dollars.

Analysis

Of the 58 new positions being created, only the 18 being assigned to general patrol will have any impact on reducing overtime.  They may produce minimal savings in relation to reducing hold-overs and call-backs.   Such savings, however, may well be eaten up by additional overtime related to report writing, ongoing investigations and court attendance generated by these same officers.

Twenty positions are destined for an expansion of the Gang Unit.   Specialty units such as Gang Units are normally heavily involved in project work.  These twenty positions will generate substantial additional overtime.

The 20 positions destined for foot patrol, unless they become a pool of officers that can be drawn on by uniform patrol divisions to fill in for shortages (in which case they would totally lose their effectiveness), will generate rather than eliminate overtime.

The Bottom Line

If the Mayor and councillors were  led to believe that the addition of these 58 positions would save overtime dollars, they either failed to ask the right questions or they were misled.

What Do 58 Additional Police Officers Cost

During the heat of Winnipeg’s 2010 Civic Election campaign, Sam Katz sprung a headline- grabbing election promise to add 58 more police officers to the ranks of the Winnipeg Police Service.

Recently, when asked about the cost of the additional officers, the Mayor indicated he did not know the cost associated to the hiring of 58 additional officers.  Does anyone really believe that?  Would the Mayor make an election promise without costing it?  Well, I suppose it’s possible – after all, it’s not his money that’s at stake.

According to the Mayor the WPS will hire an additional 32 officers in 2011 and a further 26 officers in 2012.

For the benefit of the Mayor, and members of the public who have an interest in how the Mayor is spending our tax dollars, I did a quick ‘back of the napkin’ calculation and came up with the following estimate.

The additional expenditure in 2011 will be just over 750,000 dollars for the first 32 officers.  In 2012 when the remaining 26 positions are filled the cost will jump to 2.8* million. Five years from now when these officers achieve the 100% pay rate for constables the bill for these 58 positions will total 5.2 million.  And that figure of 5.2 million comes with a proviso:  the numbers quoted here are based on the current pay schedule.  If, for example, salaries were to increase, say, 3% per annum for the next 5 years, that number would jump from 5.2 million to 5.8 million.

Now Your Worship, we all know what your election promise will cost us.

*calculations are based on a starting salary of $43,000.00, plus 15% for benefits, and a onetime cost of $2000.00 (per position) to equip new recruits.  Figures quoted do not include the cost of additional vehicles, fuel or other additional costs that will be incurred by the Service as its complement expands.

Mayerthorpe Inquiry Begins

On March 10th 2005, I, along with hundreds (if not thousands) of police officers from Canada and the United States marched through the streets of Edmonton en-route to the funeral of four members of the RCMP.  It was a show of  solidarity and respect for the fallen officers  who had been murdered while on duty in Mayerthorpe Alberta.

There has been much speculation about what went so dreadfully wrong on that fateful day in March of 2005.  Publicly the RCMP have been tight-lipped about how it was possible for the killer to get back to the quonset hut the Mounties were guarding, unnoticed, and kill all four members present.

An inquiry under the Alberta Fatality Inquiries Act began Monday.  The intent of the inquiry is not to assign blame but rather to establish the facts and make recommendations to avoid similar tragedies in the future.

The determination that the four officers were murdered by James Roszko, aided and abetted by two others has settled the question of who was blameworthy in a criminal sense.

The inquiry, however, may shed further light on what actually happened; what the RCMP  policies and procedures were in relation to the incident  in question; what changes the RCMP have made in the ensuing 6 years; and what still needs to be done.

Many police officers (albeit without all the facts) are of the opinion that these four deaths were preventable.

Foot Patrols Part III – The Pre-Community Policing Era

In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, Winnipeg was at the very cutting edge of what later came to be known as Community Policing.  It was dubbed Operation Affirmative Action  (OAA).

OAA incorporated many of the principles and values first proposed by Sir Robert Peel when the London Metropolitan Police Force was formed in 1829.  OAA was an approach to policing that recognized the importance of forming partnerships between the police and the community at the local level.  Hence it was structured on a geographical basis.  It was an early  form of Zone Policing that was later popularized by many Canadian and American cities under the banner of ‘Community Policing’.

The main tenets of OAA were:

  • permanent long-term assignment of  patrol unit and beat personnel to specific geographical areas;
  • the use of problem solving as opposed to a strictly legal approach to dealing with issues at the community level;
  • being proactive in terms of developing a working partnership with residents and business people on the an officer’s assigned beat and patrol unit area as well as addressing local community issues in their early stages before they developed into full-blown community problems.

The concept was a sound one but ahead of its time.  The OAA approach represented a radical departure from the policing norms of the day in terms of values, goals and approaches.

Officers assigned to beat patrol received very limited training and for the most part continued doing beat patrol in the same manner as they had in the past.  The proactive side of the equation was not sufficiently explained to either beat personnel or members assigned to mobile patrol units.  The entire operation was administered by a Staff Sergeant and without any apparent support by the police executive of the day, many officers took and expressed the attitude “this too shall pass” and failed to buy into the initiative.

Lastly, the police executive of the day was not prepared to give up decision-making power or control to the officers working at the street level.  This attitude  prevented the a proactive approach central to the success of OAA from taking hold.

Like many good ideas OAA  suffered from insufficient executive commitment,  inadequate pre-implementation  training and a general lack of post-implementation  nurturing.

As a consequence OAA died on the vine.

Part IV will deal with foot patrols during the community policing era which was kick started with the publication of a discussion paper titled A Vision of the Future of Policing in Canada, published by the Solicitor General of Canada in 1990.

Political Interference in Police Investigations

We are so lucky to be living in Winnipeg!

In Winnipeg we can count on pictures in the media of the Chief of Police and the Mayor grinning like… well you know.

Things are different in  Miami Florida where Miguel Esposito the chief of police,  has accused Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado of  interference in police operations.  There are few grins to be had in Miami.

(Photo courtesy of the Miami Herald)

Exposito is alleging that the mayor interfered with a gambling enforcement operation and accused the mayor of going beyond the legal bounds of his office.

The hostilities between the mayor and the chief  stem from the Mayor’s support for an ordinance regulating coin operated machines that can be used for illegal gambling.

The machines in question could generate as much as $750,000.00 for the city annually.

This very public dispute between the mayor and the chief of police has a predictable conclusion.  The mayor will fire the chief and hire a chief whose views on gambling align more closely with those of the mayor’s.

We are so lucky we live in Winnipeg.

We have a mayor who just recently stated that he has NEVER interfered with police operations and is not planning to do so – at least, in his words, not right now.

Oh what a relief it is.

Missing and Murdered Women Task Force

Some time ago I wrote a post about the motivation behind the creation of the joint Winnipeg Police and RCMP task force created to reexamine the cases of missing and murdered women in Manitoba.

From the very outset this had all the appearances of a politically motivated exercise.  The Winnipeg police and the RCMP had not been clamouring for additional resources to fund such a task force.  Yet the Provincial government stepped forward, provided funding and initiated the Task Force.

The results to this point have not been anything tangible – no arrests.  That does not mean that the officers assigned to the task force have not been doing their jobs.  In circumstances such as these the police should not be expected to share the results of their efforts publicly.  That could, and in many cases would be, counterproductive if indeed they have new leads or possible suspects.

The Winnipeg Police and the RCMP,  however, could  provide a general overview of what they have been doing in terms of process.  They could, for example, indicate that a certain percentage of the total number of files under consideration have been reviewed.  They could indicate in a general sense whether that review has yielded useful information that has prompted further investigation in some cases.  They could also indicate when it is anticipated that the  review of all the files will be completed.

By saying nothing they are leaving the impression that they have been doing, well, nothing, and I’m sure that’s not the case.

2010 Winnipeg Police Annual Report – Not

Annual reports can be very useful tools, generally providing a review of the previous year’s performance. Like most major corporations, the Winnipeg Police Service releases an annual report.   Based on the late year release of the 2009 Annual Report – it wasn’t made available until December 2010 – one can anticipate that it may be another 11 months before the public and media see the 2010 Annual Report.

Eleven months after the fact is a little too late to get crime statistics.  After 11 months, statistics, especially crime statistics, are old,  stale and  really of little if any use if one wants to analyze them and effect any meaningful change.

So if you want a statistical  preview  of  the 2010 annual report visit the Crimestat website and click on ‘view report’.  Unlike the Annual Report (i.e. the official ‘picture book’ version), the website has no glossy pictures of helicopters and guns (the preoccupation of the mayor and current police executive).   You can look at the pictures, however, when the actual  annual report comes out in December.  If, of course, that’s what you’re after.

The ‘star’ again this year driving the  majority of the 8% reduction in the crimes tracked by Crimestat was the award winning  Winnipeg Auto Theft Reduction Strategy, the evidence based and data driven strategy that was implemented in 2005.

Election Promises Part II – Foot Patrols

Foot Patrol in the 1970’s and early 1980’s

Up until the early 1980’s the Winnipeg Police Service had 18 or so areas of the city that were designated as ‘beats’. These beats consisted primarily of major streets in the commercial areas of the city.  Beat officers were assigned to patrol these beats, on foot.

Beats 1 and 2, as an example, covered Main Street from James Avenue to Higgins Avenue.  Beats 3 and 4 covered Main Street from Market Avenue to Mayfair Avenue and beats 5 and 6 covered Portage Avenue from Main Street to Sherbrook Street.  Other designated beats included north Main Street from Sutherland Avenue to Inkster Boulevard, Selkirk Avenue, Logan Avenue, Ellice Avenue, Sargent Avenue and portions of Corydon Avenue.

Beats were described in a ‘beat book’ which laid out the geographical area of the beats and included comments in terms of specific duties that officers assigned to that beat were required to perform as well as ‘special attentions’ (an early version of a ‘hotspot’).  Beat 4, as an example, required the assigned officer to perform traffic duty at the intersection of Mayfair Avenue and Main Street between 4:30 and 5:30 in the afternoon to facilitate the smooth egress of traffic from the downtown area.

The highest priority beats were beats 1 and 2 – the Main Street  ‘drag’ as it was referred to.

Beat patrol was primarily a duty assigned to raw rookies or more senior constables who were being punished for some real or imagined transgression.  I recall one officer, who was senior to me, walking the beat without a gun.  The problem was that he could not pass the required spelling test.  He was, however, an excellent shot with a hand gun and had earned ‘crossed revolvers’ during training.  So he walked the beat with the little applicate of crossed revolvers stitched to the sleeve of his tunic, but no gun.  He could not be assigned to a patrol unit because policy dictated that officers assigned to a car had to carry a gun.  When we patrolled the beat together the standing joke was that if we got involved in a serious situation that required gun play, I would toss him my gun, he would do the shooting  and I would write the required reports.  Although not as good a shot, I was issued with a gun because I could spell.

Another very senior constable, close to retirement, normally walked the beat in the Fort Rouge area.  He quite frequently missed his hourly calls and at times after being ‘missing’ for most of his shift, other beat officers were assigned to go search for him.  He was usually located at one of his favorite haunts on Corydon Avenue, generally two or three ‘sheets to the wind’.

Beat duty was fairly basic: Walk the assigned beat.  During day light hours.  Be visible.  Respond to any citizen enquiries on your designated beat.  Do occasional traffic duty during rush hour periods and hand out the odd parking tag and ‘mover’.

Movers were moving violations, breaches of the Highway Traffic Act such as running a red light or having faulty equipment on a vehicle such as a burned out head or tail light.  During hours of darkness, beat constables would ‘skulk’ around and do property checks. They were to be familiar with the call box locations on their beat, call in every hour, and to watch for the flashing lights mounted on top of the call boxes which indicated they were needed for a specific duty on their beat.

If a beat officer encountered a drunk individual the officer was expected to call for the paddy wagon or a patrol car to assist in transporting the drunk to the drunk tank.  Back in the seventies that actually meant a  drunk tank on the 4th floor at the Public Safety Building.

As a rule, beat officers patrolled by themselves and were not normally dispatched to calls for service. Those assigned to Beats 1 and 2, however, were assigned in pairs to walk Main Street – two officers on the east side of the street and two officers on the west side. Beats 1 and 2 were part of the notorious Main Street strip (the drag) that was home to a large number of hotels like the McLaren (which still exists), the Brunswick, the National, the Occidental, the Patricia and the Mount Royal. Officers assigned to these two beats saw a lot of action in the form of alcohol fuelled disputes, thefts, robberies and assaults.

The biggest ‘sin’ a beat officer could commit (well actually there were several), was to not call in every hour as required, to miss a flashing light, or to not be available for an ‘officer’s visit’.  An officer’s visit was a visit from the Patrol Sergeant whose job it was to roam the streets (in a car) and check on the well-being of beat officers as well as to ensure they were on their designated beats.  And lastly, and in the eyes of some Patrol Sergeants, the most important thing was that the beat officer was to never leave his or her assigned beat area.

Back in the 70’s and 80’s being assigned to beat patrol put you at the very bottom of the pecking order. Beat patrol was a rite of passage, something you needed to work your way through before you were assigned to a ‘cruiser car’.

Because beat officers lacked mobility and were considered ‘non dispatchable resources’, it does not come as a big surprise that as the volume of calls for service grew, beat officers were removed from the beat and assigned to cars. Once assigned to cars they became dispatchable resources.

The next post will look at the advent of community policing in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s and the move to return officers to the beat.