OFF THE WIRE
Tom Brodbeck
winnipegsun.com
There are many good reasons why city hall approved 58 more cops for Winnipeg’s police force Wednesday. And not all of them have to do with this city’s burgeoning violent crime.
No doubt the single biggest reason we need more cops on the street — even though we’ve added close to 200 more officers since 2004 — is to tackle violent crime in our neighbourhoods.
It’s no secret violent crime and gang-related street crime is on the rise in Winnipeg. Punk criminals are now resorting to driving stolen vehicles right at cops, demonstrating a level of uncontrolled bravado never seen before in this city.
There are more guns on the street. And there is more organized crime driving the drug trade, prostitution and gang turf wars.
We simply need more law enforcement out on the streets to combat that. It doesn’t necessarily mean it will drive down crime rates. That’s up to the courts and Parliament to start getting serious with repeat, violent offenders.
But it will make our communities safer by having more cops to respond to and investigate crimes.
There are other reasons why we need more cops on the street, though. The truth is, we need more feet on the ground to help free up cops who have to deal with other growing parts of law enforcement.
For example, there is a whole new institutional aspect of organized crime that never existed before in Winnipeg, at least not at today’s levels.
Many organized crime rings are larger and more sophisticated than they were 20 years ago. We didn’t have the Hells Angels in Winnipeg in the 1990s, for example.
And it takes massive amounts of police resources to monitor, infiltrate and penetrate these organizations.
That manpower has to come from somewhere.
Police are also busier than ever with Internet crimes, which is a relatively new area of law enforcement.
There was a time not long ago, for example, when police didn’t have to devote the kind of resources they now do to fight online child pornography. It’s a massive, labour intensive undertaking and it requires significant personnel to do it properly.
That, too, takes away from front-line policing.
Even some variety of fraud, like sophisticated credit card and bank card fraud, didn’t exist 20 years ago the way it does today. Technology can bring great benefits to society but it also provides new opportunities for criminals to rip people off. And police agencies have to stay on top of that.
Unfortunately some aspects of street-level policing have suffered as a result of all of this, even with the increase in police officers.
Traffic policing in Winnipeg, for example — where cops pull drivers over for speeding, red-light infractions and impaired driving while also checking for stolen vehicles, unregistered vehicles and people driving without a licence — has declined in recent years.
Police Chief Keith McCaskill confirmed that to me a couple of years ago.
It’s been replaced in large part with automated photo enforcement, which unfortunately is geared towards revenue generation rather than safety.
Hopefully with more police officers added, McCaskill will help right that wrong.
The truth is, we probably need even more than the 58 officers that were approved this week.
But it’s a good start.
For more, visit Brodbeck’s blog Raise a Little Hell at winnipegsun.com. Reach Tom by e-mail at tom.brodbeck@sunmedia.ca.
