The London Police Service Board is detailing some six-figure costs of policing efforts made in the city last year.
According to a London Police Service’s report on its internal task forces, the cost of policing the 2022 Western University homecoming (HoCo) event in September comes in at just over $265,000.
The recent HoCo price tag marks a $9,057 increase from the so-called “fake homecoming” (FoCo) in 2021 which cost taxpayers $256,098.
Between Sept. 24 and 25 last year, London police issued more than 200 charges, including 22 Liquor Licence Control Act charges and 34 administrative monetary penalties, such as tickets for noise violations, and street and yard maintenance bylaw infractions.
Const. Sandasha Bough told Global News that three criminal code charges were also laid as two people were arrested on outstanding warrants and another was arrested in relation to assaulting police.
Police also issued “a number of warnings,” including 162 provincial and 16 bylaw warnings.
In total, roughly 6,000 to 7,000 people were on Broughdale Avenue and surrounding streets at the height of the unsanctioned event, still well below turnout numbers recorded in previous years such as 2019, when roughly 25,000 people filled the streets.
According to the London police report, “the definition of an internal task force is a planned operation established within the police service related to the investigation of criminal activity.” The information gathered by task forces is used to both identify crime trends as well as deploy resources.
Some 24 task forces were formed in 2022, a number that has doubled since 2020.
“There was a significant increase in the number of criminal charges laid in relation to internal task forces in 2022 as compared with 2021,” the report says. “This is due in large part to the number of task forces undertaken in 2022.”
Police also highlighted the project task force assembled last year for the complex murder investigation of Lynda Marques cost of $559,276.
Marques, 30, was gunned down in her vehicle on the evening of Sept. 10, 2021, as she returned to her home at 2229 Wateroak Dr. in the city’s northwest end.
Police announced the first arrest in the case in May 2022, an 18-year-old Toronto-area man charged with first-degree murder. A 23-year-old man was later taken into custody in Regina, Sask., and also charged with the same criminal offence.
The costs for the Homecoming and Marques murder investigation internal task forces totalled $824,431, according to the report.
London police internal task forces led to a total of 59 arrests, 516 criminal charges, and 444 provincial offences notices last year.
Police said these arrests coincided with numerous criminal charges relating to drug trafficking, firearms smuggling, violent offences, possession of a firearm and using a firearm to commit an indictable offence.
The police board is expected to receive the report Thursday.
– with files from Global News’ Matthew Trevithick and Kelly Wang.
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