North Point Douglas activist questions reassignment of community police officers

A longtime North Point Douglas community activist is raising concerns about a shift in Winnipeg police resources.

Sel Burrows, chair of the North Point Douglas Residents Committee, said he called the Winnipeg Police Service's community support unit for his area to report two incidents Tuesday morning, only to find no one was available to respond.

Burrows said he was told officers in the unit had been tasked to general patrol duty because of a spike in calls for service.

"I was in shock," he said. "I've been working closely with the police for 10 years now and this is the first time that the entire unit, as far as we know, has been taken off service."

Officers in various units, including the community support unit, are transferred to general patrol duties to keep up with the high volume of calls for service that often come in over the summer months, a Winnipeg police spokesperson said.

The transfer of resources between units is common practice and happens on an ongoing, case-by-case basis to address needs, Const. Tammy Skrabek added.

Burrows says community support unit officers play an important role in keeping crime at bay in North Point Douglas because they know the neighbourhood and its residents.

He worries about the effects of having the community support officers reassigned, and said he wrote to police Chief Danny Smyth to outline his concerns.

"General patrol responds to 911 calls and then go on to another one," Burrows said.

"There are issues where it takes a little bit more time and it takes a little bit more community knowledge to solve and prevent crimes and thereby stop large numbers of calls to 911."

'This is very normal': police

Const. Rob Carver said redeployment of officers is temporary, and a question of effective use of resources.

"First of all, it's temporary and secondly — and more importantly — this is very normal for us," he said.

"We regularly deploy, redeploy people to different positions throughout this service on a daily, weekly basis … If there's something that causes a need for one area, you're not going to leave resources where they aren't utilized appropriately."

If the reverse was true, Carver said that would be a bigger issue.

"If we didn't move officers to place of need on a temporary basis, I think we would realistically be open to criticism for that," he said.

"I'm proud of the fact that we are nimble enough as an organization that we can deploy officers on relatively short notice to be able to meet the needs of the citizens and people in a particular community."

Community policing works, says Burrows

Burrows credits community policing efforts for thwarting methamphetamine dealers and shutting down two drug houses in recent months.

"We had a couple of crack houses, where people set up selling crack," Burrows said.

"Community support unit officers, who are really impressive ... went and had a visit with them — a little chat with them — and according to the neighbours they stopped selling crack, so that's a huge boon to our community."

He said he doesn't question the need to move people around if 911 calls are up, but he questions the consequence of removing community policing officers from their duties.

"I'm concerned that crime prevention, if it's taken offline for any length of time, will just increase the number of calls for general patrol to solve," Burrows said.

Cuts lead to 'reactive policing': police association

The Winnipeg Police Association agrees that the redirection of officers normally dedicated to community policing is a concern.

"These are the members who are working to support the sort of proactive efforts in the community which are important to reduce crime in the long term. Instead, our members now are almost totally reactive," association president Moe Sabourin said in a release Tuesday.

"As we said when we saw the 20 per cent increase in the violent crime index revealed in July, we knew the pressure on our members would continue to build throughout the summer," Sabourin said.

"Criminals do not plan their activity based on the rate of inflation, and the budget currently in place for the Winnipeg Police Service is one that will increasingly allow only for reactive policing and long waits for citizens who call police."

Over the weekend, Winnipeg police received 2,800 calls for service and officers were dispatched to 1,150 of those, Skrabek said.

She said while the demand on resources was significant, it was not unusual for a summer weekend.