Toronto police ask for nearly $1.2B budget next year, $20M more than 2023

Toronto police are asking for a 1.7 per cent increase in their net operating budget next year to bring their funding to nearly $1.2 billion, but a group that wants to make the police more accountable say the increase is not warranted.

In a news release on Monday, the Toronto Police Service says its proposed net operating budget for 2024 is $1.186 billion — a $20 million increase from the 2023 approved budget.

In a Dec. 11 report to the Toronto Police Service Board, police say the budget increase would enable them to hire about 300 new uniformed officers by the end of the year to help improve 911 response times and hire about 100 new staff to fill civilian roles.

The proposed budget doesn't include funding that might be needed for pay increases, however. Existing collective agreements end on Dec. 31, 2023 and no new agreements are in place. 

Police Chief Myron Demkiw said in the release that the service needs more money because of an increase in emergency calls, reported hate crimes, violent carjackings and population. Emergency calls to police have increased 18 per cent this year, according to the release.

"As our city's population grows at record levels, spreading our officers' time any thinner by not hiring would lead to increased member burnout and less safe emergency response for Torontonians. We must be able to be there when the public calls," Demkiw said.

The operating budget request will go to the police services board on Tuesday. If passed, the request would go to the city's budget committee and city council in the new year.

Toronto doesn't need more police, former mayor says

John Sewell, a former Toronto mayor and a coordinator of the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition, which encourages debate about police policy issues, said the coalition believes the budget can be reduced and it has suggestions on how to deliver policing with less money. Reducing the budget means reducing the number of officers, he said.

"You don't need an armed cop to be issuing tickets or directing traffic. That can easily be done by civilians," Sewell said.

"We don't have to have a lot more police officers paid this extraordinary amount of money and wandering around with guns and body armours and Tasers and batons. We don't need that. It's not going to make Toronto a safer or better place," he said.

Sewell said if the budget proposal is granted, no other city department would be expanding at the rate requested by the police.

In a release, the coalition says the service could cuts costs in the following ways:

• Divert more mental crisis calls to the Toronto Community Crisis Service.
• Have fewer police at public events, including parades and demonstrations.
• Stop random police patrols.
• Have fewer uniformed officers and more civilians do the work of traffic services and ticketing.
• Have only one officer in a cruiser after dark instead of two.

Syrus Marcus Ware, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter-Canada and an assistant professor at McMaster University, said there are alternatives to policing. Ware said more money should be spent on mental health services outside of 911 police responses and on community supports for people in mental health crisis.

Black Lives Matter called for the defunding of police after the killing of George Floyd in 2020.

"Whenever they do something wrong, we need to give them more money. Whenever they do something right, we need to give them more money. When are taxpayers, people in the city of Toronto, are going to say enough, enough already of this bloated investment and funnelling of all of our money and resources into policing?" Ware said.

"This is not what we need in order to keep our communities safe and more secure. We need something different."

Jon Reid, president of the Toronto Police Association, said the increase is "modest" and below inflation. He said 911 response times are now upwards of 22 to 26 minutes.

"We need to ensure that we have the capacity, which is the staffing and the resources, to make sure that when someone calls 911 here in Toronto, we're able to get there in a timely manner. And by anyone's standards, 22 minutes is not there," Reid said.

In the release, police said the service has 600 fewer officers than in 2020, even though the population has grown by about 460,000 people in the last decade.

"If people don't feel safe, that is a huge problem," Reid said. "It's critically important to make sure that people feel safe and are safe."