Winnipeg police say spike in number of protests, public gatherings straining service

Winnipeg Police Service Supt. Dave Dalal laid it out plainly for members of the Winnipeg Police Board Friday morning — there are simply way more public protests this year, and they're affecting the work of the police service.

"To give you some perspective of why I'm here talking about this, up to about 2017 we saw between 12 and 15 events per year, and so far this year we've deployed officers to 110 events," Dalal told the board.

Approximately 40 per cent of those have been people protesting pandemic health orders, such as mask and vaccination mandates. 

That's meant the Winnipeg Police Service sometimes has to send officers to the public gatherings instead of their regular assignments in community support and even general patrol.

The police service has a crowd management unit normally assigned to cover events, but the volume and size of recent protests have increased the demand for officers.

"Our ability to work proactively to solve problems is impacted by the number of protests. We, as a last resort, use emergency response officers," Dalal told reporters after the meeting.

Dalal acknowledged there has been a certain "volatility" to some of the recent gatherings.

Officers monitor social media for clues to when protests will happen, who is involved and whether they can reach out to leaders of the groups to help plan a safe event, he said.

Last week, a large crowd of protesters gathered around the Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg to voice anger over recent health orders.

There were concerns raised from patients, visitors and staff about aggressive and intimidating behaviour from some protesters around the hospital.

Police board chair Markus Chambers said that situation should not be repeated, and he feels the police should move a crowd back if it interferes with people coming into or leaving a hospital. 

"I would encourage people to look at other venues to host those protests, and if they're being disrespectful or if they're being aggressive, yes, police are well within their rights to remove them from those situations," the city councillor for St. Norbert-Seine River said following the meeting.

WPS Chief Danny Smyth was reluctant to talk about specific tactics when his officers are monitoring crowds, but did say there are some limits to what crowds would be allowed to do during a protest.

"Typically our approach is to work with the organization to try to ensure that people can balance their ability to protest. But we can't be blocking emergency departments at hospitals," Smyth said.

Smyth wouldn't say how his officers would react to facilities such as HSC being blocked by protesters, but said the service is certainly looking at what happened at the last gathering.

"So we've had that experience there. Now, I can assure you that we'll be taking different plans should that go forward in the future. I'm not going to share that with you at this point."

Staffing the protests and monitoring their organizers online has cost the police service operational time and added pressure to its budget, he said.

Lower revenues, pension deficit

The protests are not the only expense spilling red ink into the police budget.

The pandemic has driven down revenues from streams like traffic tickets. As well, a recent audit revealed a $5.7 million underfunding of the police officers pension fund.

The city took some of the accumulated surplus in the pension — a so-called "pension holiday" — at one point several years ago, and now those funds are needed to pay benefits.

The gap has started a skirmish over whether the police service should find further savings to cover the shortfall, or if the City of Winnipeg should make up the difference from its reserves.

"How it's going to be covered, I'm not sure yet," Smyth said after the meeting. 

"I'm committed to the board that I will work with them and the city to try to work in our interests here. Cuts, I guess, is one option, but it's not the only one."

Chambers, on behalf of the police board, says the city should make up the difference.