In decisive fashion, Lethbridge City Council approved an additional $1.53 million towards the Lethbridge Police Service’s structural operating deficit Tuesday.
“If we didn’t receive the funding, we were going to have to re-evaluate how we deliver service in the city,” LPS Chief Rob Davis said.
The majority of the funding request stems from a substantial increase in overtime hours.
“Half of our (overtime) in 2016 was attributed to major crime,” Davis said. “We front-end load the investigation. A lot of officers are deployed on the front-end so we have the best chance to solve it.”
From 2014 to 2015, overtime costs for homicide work went up close to $200,000. In 2016, the number increased again, this time to close to $300,000.
To put those numbers in perspective, one 2016 homicide case cost the police service $132,000 in overtime.
“When we have a major case, which we would call a ‘Who done it?,’ where there’s somebody standing there when we arrive who admits to it, we have to employ a number of investigative techniques,” Davis said. “You might even see wiretaps involved, and once you get into those specialized techniques… those are very, very costly.”
Davis says when the service takes on a major crime, the costs can quickly add up because to be right, they have to be thorough.
“We can’t just get tunnel vision because that’s when police services get in trouble,” Davis said. “If you have tunnel vision, you follow only one lead. So any information that comes in, we have to investigate all of those leads and exhaust them.”
The only councillor not to vote in favour of the LPS budget change was Jefferey Coffman. Though he supported the ask, he’s concerned about the precedent a mid-budget change could set for other organizations.
Davis says when people call, police can’t not pick-up.
“We don’t have the option of saying no,” Davis said. “We can’t put a price and say we’ll investigate a crime until this certain dollar value. Our job is to solve the crime.”
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