A new report suggests the Thunder Bay Police Service and many other police forces across the country are overstaffed.
The report was penned by LU Economics Professor Livio De Matteo on behalf of the Fraser Institute, and shows that Thunder Bay is ranked as having the sixth-most overstaffed police force of the 32 Canadian cities studied.
The city’s police service employs 222 officers. That translates into 193 officers per 100,000 civilians. The new Fraser Institute report suggest the city should only have 170 officers per 100,000 residents.
Report author De Matteo used crime rates and other socio-economic factors to calculate the estimated optimal officer numbers in the 32 Canadian cities studied.
Thunder Bay's crime rate is down 18 per cent since 2001, statistics that do not include reported crime of 2014, but police Chief JP Levesque says officers still face extremely heavy workloads
The chief doesn't agree that there are too many police officers. Instead, Levesque believes Thunder Bay landed on the high end of this study because his officers routinely have to deal with issues caused by people that have fallen through the cracks of society.
On this point, De Matteo agrees.
City police respond to a high volume of crimes that are categorized as quality of life issues.
(TBT News/ Ryan Bonazzo)
