Saskatoon Police Service invokes emergency clause and rejigs staff to tackle increase in calls

The Saskatoon Police Service is invoking a rarely used emergency clause and shifting around its officers to address a rise in calls to the force. 

The decision — shared over the weekend with members in a memo obtained by CBC News — comes as the force begins investigating a record 14th homicide this year. 

"I think it's an acknowledgement that we're having a hard time keeping up with our calls for service and the ever growing violence in the city," Dean Pringle, the president of the Saskatoon Police Association, said Sunday of the changes outlined in the memo.

The measures go into effect on Monday, according to the memo. 

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Under one initiative, Saskatoon police officers currently assigned to the Combined Traffic Services Saskatchewan unit — which teams up local officers with RCMP members to enforce highway traffic laws in central and southeastern Saskatchewan — will now work "in or near Saskatoon on Thursday, Friday and Saturday [12-hour] night shifts." 

"When necessary," the memo added, "the watch commander will be able to redeploy members assigned to Traffic, Beats or Bikes to support patrol."

Pringle said the changes affect upwards of 30 officers. 

Police Chief Troy Cooper said it's been a challenge on some recent weekends to make sure there are enough officers securing major crime scenes. 

"When we were trying to backfill those officers who were tied up at that scene, it was difficult for us," Cooper said Monday. "And so we needed to have more staff available to assist that frontline." 

The decision came before the 14th homicide recorded this past weekend, he added.

"It's been several weeks coming," Cooper said. "As our staff get more and more exhausted from those [emergencies], it becomes more and more difficult to find staff who are interested in attending. They're exhausted and so some steps had to be taken." 

'In cases of emergency' 

The redeployment is being done under Article 4 (b) of the police service's contract with officers. That section allows the service to change officers' work hours "in cases of emergency and in no other cases."

"I've never seen that," said Pringle, who has spent 18 years on the force.

CBC News reached out to the Saskatoon Police Service for comment on Sunday. 

The police service typically sees an increase in calls during the summer, according to a tweet from Police Chief Troy Cooper.

But as other police force tweets from the last month indicate, front-line patrol officers were still being overburdened with calls for service as summer came to a close.

"To me it's quite obvious we don't have enough police officers in Saskatoon," Pringle said. 

Pringle said the force needs around 38 more officers to reach "optimum staffing," whereas the preliminary police budget for 2020 is only asking for three new constables.

"It's 100 per cent not enough," Pringle said. 

Cooper said seven new positions are being sought in the 2020 and 2021 police budgets. Some of those new positions, including a surveillance video technician and a forensic accountant, will free up several patrol officers who are currently called to do that specialized work. 

Officer burnout

While the police association understands the need for the changes outlined in the memo — which have no specific timeline attached to them — they are not a sustainable solution, Pringle said. 

"Our current patrol guys are … getting burnt out so it's great to have some extra help but eventually the guys doing the extra help [are] going to get burnt out too."

One patrol officer recently worked 72 hours in a 96-hour span, Pringle said. 

In a recent interview with CBC News, when asked whether the police force had enough resources to deal with the call volume, Chief Cooper said, "I don't think you could ever have enough police resources."

"When you look at some of the other cities in Canada … where they have significantly more police presence per population than we do, it would be unfair to say that we have enough with that. That can't be."

Cooper added that the police service tries to use the resources it has in a targeted fashion. 

"We want to try and make sure that we have them in the right place and that some of them are not just responding, that we do have an investment in long-term crime prevention initiatives."

Statistics Cooper shared with CBC News Monday show the service typically sees a bump in calls for service during the summer.

But Cooper said 2019 has been a particularly challenging summer for officers. 

"We [had] 10 homicides in a 90 day period," he said "Although these were challenging times, our staff were amazing and and they've had a really professional police response, including some of the serious offences."

Crime down in some areas 

Earlier in the summer — after the police reported the eighth of what are now 14 homicides in Saskatoon this year — Cooper noted an encouraging decrease in others areas of crime, such as car thefts, armed robberies and weapons possessions. 

"Some great news for us to see some of the programs we saw were maybe becoming successful. We're getting some fruit from them," he said of prevention efforts.

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While Saskatoon recently fell in standing among Canadian cities with a high crime severity index, it still ranks near the top of the list, according to the most recent figures from Statistics Canada. 

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Drugs remain a recurring factor in incidents investigated by police. 

At a recent police inquest, a member of the force's tactical support unit estimated that methamphetamine is involved in about 80 per cent of patrol calls.