Sudbury police chief defends service's record in outlying areas

Greater Sudbury Police Service (GSPS) Chief Paul Pedersen says he disagrees with the view that the city's outlying areas are underserved by police.

Pedersen said police have done 141 focused patrols in the region of Levack and Dowling, at the city's northwest border, so far this year.

"That's where the officers are there without being called, looking for those who may have been causing problems," he told CBC News.

Pedersen's comments come in response to an open letter from a Levack resident, who said she felt like her community had been forgotten by police.

"I've watched services across the board decline, including police services," Levack resident Chantelle Gorham told CBC News.

"And as a former police officer, I think I have a better sense than most as to the challenges that police officers face, but also requirements of the job that, as far as I can see, are just no longer being met."

Gorham said the loss of dedicated "storefronts" for Sudbury police in outlying areas were a big blow for communities like Levack.

The storefronts were places where police officers could do their paperwork and interact with people from that part of the city.

Pedersen said GSPS cut the storefront program to meet the city's budget guidelines.

"It's certainly something we're going to put back on the table for this year's budget and consider," he said about the program.

But he added the city has to make difficult choices each year when it budgets for services like policing.

Pedersen said police services across Canada have been stretched thin and have had to triage cases in the same way health-care workers might triage patients in an emergency room.

"We're getting 200 radio calls a day," he said.

Pedersen added that the local response to the opioid epidemic has required a lot of resources. 

Public Health Sudbury and Districts had an opioid death rate of 52.9 per 100,000 people from April 2021 to March 2022. That was the second highest in the province, after Thunder Bay.

"Each one of those is an investigation for a police officer or a team of police officers," Pedersen said.

Greater Sudbury Police Sgt. Randy Buchowski, president of the Sudbury Police Association, said the city needs more police officers to handle the increasing demands.

"You know, just like anywhere else, we have officers that are suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder)," he said.

"We have mental health issues and at any given time we could have 10 to 15 per cent of the workforce off."

Buchowski said that when Sudbury Police created a new division for cybercrime, they didn't hire additional officers.

"We're taking officers from the road to go to these other areas and it's leaving us short on the road," he said.

"People aren't stopping doing break and enters because they're going to do computer crime."

Buchowski said that in 2020 the Ontario Provincial Police received funding for 200 more officers. And in May, the city of North Bay, Ont., got council approval to hire nine of their own. 

But groups like Black Lives Matter Sudbury have routinely called for police to be defunded, with money allocated to the police budget to be spent on social and health services, instead.