Police seeking more officers as local crime stats exceed provincial and national rates

A funding request to hire more officers isn’t being sugar-coated by London police Chief Steve Williams.

“It’s a significant ask, but we have significant needs,” he tells CTV News.

London police are asking city council to fund hiring 20 additional police officers and four full-time civilian staff in 2023.

The price tag is just shy of $4 million this year ($3.41 million new popositions/$550,000 equipment/vehicles).

In their submission to city council’s Assessment Growth Funding Allocation process, London police detail the recent rise in crime.

“The provincial property crime rate is 2,349/100,000, while London's rate is 4,346/100,000, nearly 86 per cent higher,” the document states.

Meanwhile, London has just 145 officers for every 100,000 citizens — the average ratio in Ontario is 181 per 100,000.

“The increase in population and widening staffing gap is further exasperated by a 30.2 per cent increase in violent offences (2020 to 2021) which require greater time to investigate, resulting in a reduced ability to provide timely response to non-violent crimes,” reads the submission to council.

“Those (violent crime) calls for service are more complex, the officers take longer to conduct investigations, and there’s typically more officers involved,” Chief Williams explains.

But not everyone is onboard.

Despite two shootings this year within view of Julie Watson’s home on Langmuir Avenue, she’s not convinced that the solution is to hire more police officers.

“They just show up afterwards and try to clean up the mess,” Watson asserts. “We need someone who can prevent the mess from even happening we need social workers. We need healthcare professionals.”

This year’s funding request is the first step in a three-year plan endorsed by the London Police Services Board to hire 52 additional officers.

Police say the hirings will allow the gradual reconstitution of the COR Unit that focuses on crime prevention, and will speed up response times.

“As we gradually repopulate our patrol force to a level that it should be at, we fully expect that response times will come down,” says the chief. “Now, that will take some time because all the officers aren’t coming on board at once.

Williams hopes to tap into assessment growth funds to cover the added policing costs.

Assessment growth is property tax revenue on new construction and does not increase tax bills.

On Feb. 28, a council committee will consider the funding request as it allocates $14.1 million of assessment growth revenue from 2022.

London's Overall Crime Severity Index (CSI) is 88.6 and substantially higher than both the provincial CSI (56.2) and national CSI (73.6).