Ontario police associations launch recruiting campaign amid staffing shortage
The campaign, known as Answer the Call, will support over 50 police services in Ontario and is backed by the provincial government, according to a news release Monday.
"Police services across Ontario are under real pressure to fill critical roles, and boards see that strain every day," said Lisa Darling, executive director of the Ontario Association of Police Service Boards, which is part of the initiative.
She called the campaign a "practical response to a growing challenge" in a statement in Monday's news release.
Other associations leading the initiative are the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, Police Association of Ontario, Indigenous Police Chiefs of Ontario, Ontario Provincial Police Association and Toronto Police Association.
Police staffing shortages are impacting public safety, response times and officer well-being, Monday's news release said.
The initiative aims to address these shortages but is also focused on "modernizing recruitment and opening the door to a more diverse pool of candidates," the release said.
More police doesn't guarantee greater safety: expert
Ontario has made several changes to police training and recruitment in recent years — including scrapping a post-secondary education requirement and covering the costs of mandatory training.
The province expanded the Ontario Police College in October to make room for 80 more cadets annually. The newly opened training spots, which are expected this year, will be reserved for small, medium and First Nation police services, Solicitor General Michael Kerzner said at the time.
Meanwhile, the Toronto Police Services Board approved a new five-year hiring plan in November, which would guarantee the force the maximum number of police officers that can be hired in 2025 and 2026.
Toronto has a ratio of officers in the low 160s per 100,000 people, Chief Myron Demkiw said at the time.
But more police does not necessarily mean greater safety, said Timothy Bryan, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto. Major cities in North America have high ratios of police officers to their population, but continue to have high rates of crime, he said.
"Police services themselves will not guarantee an X per cent decline in crime if we have an X per cent increase in officers, because they know that that's not how it works," Bryan said.
"These things are not quite linked in the way that they're being presented."
He said it is important to consider issues that impact public safety and crime other than the number of police officers, such as poverty and other socioeconomic factors.
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