The acting police chief in London, Ont., is speaking out about her concerns on gun violence after the city recorded nine shootings in the first three months of 2023.
“That is unprecedented,” Trish McIntyre told 980 CFPL’s Devon Peacock on The Morning Show.
McIntyre says the region has seen “an enormous increase” in crime.
“We track Stats Canada (and) London saw the largest percentage in our region,” she said. “We see the root causes: homelessness and mental health addiction.”
The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) shares McIntyre’s concerns.
In a statement, the CACP called for a meeting with Canada’s premiers to address a number of urgent and emerging issues surrounding violence and policing in Canada.
“We are concerned about the safety of our front-line police officers. We are concerned about how repeat violent offenders are being managed by Canada’s justice system,” the statement read. “We are concerned with the escalation of gun, gang and other violent crime in our country, often intensified by mental health and addiction issues.”
Nine police officers have been killed in Canada since September 2022.
McIntyre says the London Police Service is looking to add 52 new officers, “and that’s just to increase our capacity to baseline (for us) to do the basic functions that police services must provide.”
She recognized that police response time is poor, but emphasized current officers’ workloads are leading to burn-out.
“From our officers’ perspective, as soon as they check-on, easily, (there are) 150 calls for them to do,” she said. “It’s not that our people aren’t working; they’re working super, super hard.”
The acting police chief says CACP’s call for a meeting with premiers is a good step, but states more awareness needs to be spread, upper levels of government need to provide further support and repeated offenders must be held in custody longer.
“The conversation is about us all working together, finding a solution and being balanced about what that solution looks like,” she said.
– with files from Global News’ Saif Kaisar
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