St. Patrick’s Day celebrations leave Kingston, Ont. police with steep bill

It’s been a month since partygoers turned Aberdeen Street into a sea of green, and now that the party is over, the bill has been revealed.

“We’re trying to work on a template that’s, ‘Here’s how much it’s going be for the events,'” says acting police chief Scott Fraser.

The cost of policing for St. Patrick’s Day was over $140,000.

Fraser says while the cost may be high, the goal was to over-prepare and then gradually start cutting back.

“If we have a lot of officers, we can let them go earlier and obviously reduce overtime,” he says. “But we can’t immediately bring in an extra 100 officers — we just don’t have the capacity.”

Mayor Bryan Paterson says he was happy with the response, but would rather it wasn’t necessary.

“I think we still need to be working towards a goal of not having giant street parties that can be dangerous,” he says.

According to Paterson, fixing this issue is not just a responsibility of the city and police force, but also of Queen’s University — and a recent task force created by the university has him optimistic.

“I’m hopeful that there are some recommendations that are going to come forward from that task force that can help to address that,” says Paterson.

Fraser shares that optimism, saying he believes this new model will get the city to a better future, however, the city is going to have to spend some money to get there.