The head of the Toronto Police Association says the union may file a grievance against the police service over the redeployment of officers to high-crime neighbourhoods.

Speaking to CP24 Thursday morning, Toronto Police Association President Mike McCormack said he is concerned about the health and safety of the officers who are being shifted from their own division to divisions in the city’s northwest end, where there has been a spike in violent crime.

“It is just a shell game. It is just moving officers from one community to another where they are not familiar with the neighbourhood, they’re not familiar with what’s going on. Then there is a depletion of resources within that division,” McCormack said.

“We are looking at grievance, we are looking at health and safety issues around this.”

McCormack said the redeployment of officers isn’t addressing the real issue facing the police service.

“You are taking officers that could be doing community-based policing, that could be doing enforcement in your neighbourhood and putting them in another neighbourhood so that they can satisfy a need because they don’t have the capacity to deal with these issues because we don’t have the staffing,” he added.

“This is not a solution to what is going on in policing in the city of Toronto right now.”

Saunders calls redeployment 'smarter policing'

During an interview with CP24 Wednesday night, Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders defended the directive to redeploy officers.

“We have added more resources in the northwest end of the city because in that area we’ve seen an increase in violent crime, especially involving firearms in that particular area,” Saunders said.

“The City of Toronto is not on fire all at the same time. Sometimes things are happening in certain areas, but not in other areas. So we are looking at the analytics, looking at the data and figuring out what we can do to maximize the existing resources that we have that are out on the road at any given time of the day.”

Saunders denied the suggestion that shifting officers to these neighbourhoods puts officer safety at risk.

"I would never sign off on anything if I thought it was going to compromise the safety of the men and women that are doing a great job out there nor the community. It is about smarter policing," he said.

“It enhances officer safety because they are where the public needs them the most and where officers will need the most help."

Supt. Ron Taverner, the unit commander for 23 Division, located in the northwest part of the city, said the officers that have been shifted to his division from other neighbourhoods are not necessarily being sent to high-crime areas.

“We’ve had two cars each day for the past week or so and that’s helped to allow us to deploy our own people into the high-crime areas,” Taverner told CP24 Thursday morning.

“The cars that are coming from other divisions are responding to radio calls, they are not in the high-crime areas particularly.”

Earlier this month, Taverner told CP24 that residents in the neighbourhood are “outraged” by the increased level of violence in the area.

One incident earlier this month involving two teenage boys left residents in 23 Division particularly rattled.

On Feb. 6, a 15-year-old boy was walking with his sister in the area of Jamestown Crescent and John Garland Boulevard when he was shot in the abdomen by a suspect leaning out of the window of a vehicle.

Taverner told CP24 that just minutes before, the same group of suspects fired multiple shots at another teen, who somehow escaped unharmed.

Taverner said he believes that it is important to have strong police presence in the community right now.

“If a couple of officers happen to be here and there is some incident at another division, they’ll be officers from surrounding divisions respond to that division,” he said.

“I think we have enough resources to respond to major issues if that’s required.”