Toronto police board approves $20 million budget increase for 2024

The Toronto Police Service (TPS) is asking the city for a nearly $1.2 billion net operating budget for 2024, which it said will allow hundreds of new uniformed officers to be hired.

Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw presented his budget proposal during Tuesday’s TPS Board meeting, requesting $1.186 billion – a $20 million increase from the approved 2023 budget.

It was approved by board members, sending it to the city’s budget committee for consideration.

“This is a budget built on a history of fiscal responsibility and constraint that aims to build in sufficient resources required to, at a minimum, maintain degraded service levels and attempt to address the delivery of adequate and effective policing services in the city of Toronto,” Demkiw wrote in his report.

The chief noted that the 2024 budget will be spent on increasing front-line resources to focus on emergency response time, augmenting investigative capacity for timely closure of cases, and improving oversight and accountability through supervision.

“This budget allows the Service to continue the vitally important proactive policing programs and build partnerships with other organizations with the goal of supporting safer communities,” Demkiw wrote.

He also provided a breakdown of where the 307 new uniformed officers will be deployed. About 170 of them will be allocated to emergency response, while 110 will be assigned to investigative roles (Hate Crimes Unit, Provincial Carjacking Task Force and Centralized Fraud Intake Office). Ten will be deployed to digital evidence disclosure, ten others will be added to the motor squad and traffic services, and the remaining seven will be allotted to “various projects.”

Demkiw claimed that while the city has grown over the past decade, TPS has seen its officers reduced by 600.

“Emergency response times have increased and protecting and supporting the victims is increasingly in jeopardy. This budget attempts to balance the needs of the community while maintaining the Service’s long-history of efforts towards financial affordability,” he wrote.

TPS also plans to add 102 new civilian roles to address “workload growth, meet legislative requirements and organizational commitments and to improve public safety outcomes.”

Of those, 60 will support case management and successful investigative outcomes, 20 will be technology roles, 15 will focus on implementing recommendations from governing bodies like the Ontario Human Rights, and five will be coordination and oversight roles.

“This hiring strategy is critical to prevent further service delivery degradation, meet legislative requirements that are necessary to achieve justice for victims, provide oversight to an increasingly younger workforce, and continue to build trust through the sustainment of proactive community programs such as the Community Neighbourhood Officers,” Demkiw said.

He added that the hiring plan will allow TPS to prepare for high levels of retirements in the coming years, rely less on redeployments and overtime and improve the wellness of members.

In his presentation, the chief warned that reducing the budget could result in “unacceptable risks,” including the prospect of not delivering adequate and effective service required of police.

He added that the non-approval of the budget in whole or in part would lead to service adjustments that could see crime victims not being supported, risk of serious violent offenders escaping justice and being released back into the community, and the justice system being further undermined due to police not meeting legal requirements.

TPS’s 2024 budget does not include the Toronto Police Service Parking Enforcement Unit, which is separately requesting a net operating budget of $51.3 million.