Ottawa police facing $2M overtime deficit after shootings, homicides

The city's "extraordinary level" of homicides and "unusual number of shootings" is expected to lead to a $2-million overtime deficit for the Ottawa Police Services.

According to the second-quarter financial status report to be tabled at Monday's Ottawa Police Services Board, a higher-than-usual number of investigation-intensive homicide cases are driving up overtime costs.

Ottawa is also experiencing an unusual number of shootings.- Ottawa Police Board's 2nd quarter financial status

Earlier this month, Montreal teen Tarique Leger was shot dead on a Lowertown residential street, making him Ottawa's ninth homicide.

"This is an extraordinary level in such a short time frame for the city, which usually experiences 10 to 12 homicides over 12 months," according to the report written by Debra Frazer, the police service's director general.

"Ottawa is also experiencing an unusual number of shootings," the report continues, citing 33 shootings in the first six months of 2016.

Plan to sell collision reports going poorly

Investigating the shootings, as well as filling in for four vacant positions, are pushing up overtime costs, as are street protests.

"For example the emergency service unit is experiencing a noticeable increase in overtime usage as the warmer months generally lead to an increase in demonstrations," said the report.

The plan to sell vehicle accident reports isn't going too well, either.

When the police services set up a system to sell collision reports — fees range from $200 up to $2,260 for a collision reconstruction report — they expected they'd be able to sell 55 per cent of the reports they produced.

"To date, the actual figure has been closer to 15 per cent," reads the report.

That means police will be taking in $800,000 less than it expected.

Despite a number of challenges, the police service is still expecting to balance its $308-million budget for 2016, according to the report.

Paid duty performs better than expected

One area that's over-performing is paid duty, which appears to be bringing in more than $1 million this year due to supervision work related to light-rail construction.

Officers earn "paid duty" when they are hired by an outside group, such as a municipality, festival or company, to oversee traffic or security issues at construction sites and public events. In these cases, the police force is also paid, in addition to the individual officer.

The police services had already upped its revenue forecast for paid-duty revenue to $820,000, but appears the force will exceed that expectation.

"Even with this adjustment taken into consideration, a surplus of $250,000 is still being projected," the report states. "A significant amount of the paid duty surplus is due to city requests related to construction and work on the light rail project."

City council recently wrote to the province to ask for permission to hire less-expensive civilians to supervise construction sites and events such as parades.

If council's plan succeeds, the police force could lose a significant source of revenue.