Sarnia's police chief is disappointed the service was not included in provincial funding to curb rising recidivism rates.
They were told their application didn't qualify based on the province's funding criteria, although they didn't provide a specific reason.
Derek Davis said they applied for $1.2 million back in August 2023, with the hope of implementing an offender management team.
He said it was a competitive process, and they were told their application didn't qualify based on the province's criteria.
"The team would look at the whole spectrum of an offender through the justice system," said Davis. "So, we'd look at having someone on the court side/bail side, and we'd have connections with our key partners like the probation office where we look at those top level offenders who commit a disproportionate amount of crime and we'd focus on how to best address that. That could be enforcement, that could be mitigation and getting into resources. We want to do whatever it takes so that we can stop having people victimized by this small group of individuals that commits crime at a disproportionate rate."
He said those funds would have been supplemented with the realignment of some of Sarnia police's internal resources because they feel the issue of repeat offenders is significant.
"Our pitch was for a holistic, coordinated, high-risk team working with courts and partners to specifically address offender management of our high-risk offenders. We're a community of about 75,000 people on paper, but it's important to remember that as the urban hub of Lambton county, a lot of resources are available for people here like the court and the jail. We probably address, as a police service, disproportionately the criminal activities just by virtue of the fact that all the resources are here. It doesn't mean that our residents are offending at a higher rate, it just means that this is where everything is. The Sarnia Police Service has to address some of the things that flow in from the county side as well."
Davis said Sarnia's crime severity index is in the top 25 per cent in the province.
He said there were 1,400 recidivism-related criminal charges in 2023 alone, up 41 per cent from 2022.
"Some of these charges flow from calls for service," he said. "So, someone calls the police, the police respond and incidental to that investigation we may discover that someone is breaching probation or whatever. What you don't see though, is the offenders that are caught based on proactive activity. This is where police go out to check compliance, and make sure they're abiding by their curfews where we're proactively looking to make sure people are abiding by the rules. That's really the area of opportunity."
Davis said over the past year, Sarnia police has worked to address that issue more directly.
"We have seen an increase in the number of charges that have flowed from that," he said. "Charges of failing to comply with a probation order, for example, have almost doubled from 2023 over the 2022 numbers, up 89 per cent. That's largely driven from our philosophy of holding offenders accountable. It doesn't accurately show the amount of non-compliance. If we had a team, we could do so much more. The compliance rates aren't anywhere near where they should be, in my opinion."
Davis said there's a whole level of unseen offences that occur in terms of recidivist offenders that they'd like to be able to address, but that don't bubble to the surface on a 911 call.
"Our top 10 individuals that we dealt with in 2023, just those 10 people were responsible for over 1,000 contacts with police," said Davis. "These are the ones we're talking about. We're not talking about someone who makes one bad decision or has a bad day. We're talking about repeated criminal activity within a handful of individuals."
Davis said the Sarnia Police Service continues to apply for any grant funding they can
He said they also requested funding to combat auto theft, but that was denied because of the relatively low number of occurrences locally.
"We'll continue to apply for grants on behalf of our residents in an effort to keep our fiscal accountability in place, and to seek funding wherever we can," he said. "We know that we aren't always going to be successful, but this one was disappointing."
Davis said although Sarnia police didn't get money this time, the bail compliance grant is a very positive undertaking by the province in supporting police agencies. He was pleased to see their policing partners benefit.
