Members of London’s City Hall are reacting to London Police Services requesting over 4 million dollars in public funding for body cameras for their patrolling officers.
The budget that’s seeking a whopping 146 million dollars in 2024 is an over 11 percent increase in comparison to the current budget.
Shawn Lewis, Deputy Mayor of the city and chair member on multiple committees, is one of the city council members that has a strong opinion on the subject considering the budget would be the largest increase in the city’s history.
Lewis believes the overall response to the request is approving saying, “I think the initial response is very positive, because we know the body cameras actually do two things. First of all, they record evidence while the police officer is on scene. Which can be very, very helpful in terms of shortening the time of filling a report… It’s also really good in terms of complaints and allegations of police misconduct.”
Deputy Mayor Lewis also believes that the overall budget increase, even though high, is practical given the current climate of the city. “Well, I know that more than an eleven percent increase certainly seems like a big number to everybody, and especially in a budget time that’s tough, it can be hard to understand why that’s necessary, but it really is necessary.”
He points out the fact that, only behind Ottawa, London has the most understaffed police force in Ontario per capita.
“For many, many years the city has prided itself on having the leanest police funding in the province. But that’s not always a good thing. When you see 9-1-1 response times that are calls that are now triages can take four days to respond to, that’s absolutely unacceptable…we’ve also experienced tremendous growth in our city, and our police force has not increased in ten percent the same way the population has in the last four years.”
Lewis says with the allocated funding for bodycams as well as more officers there’s a lot of changes he’d like to see happen. “I wanna see increased conviction rates when charges are laid because we’ve got that good video evidence. I wanna see increased community safety in terms of focusing on some of the complex investigations that police have to undertake… human trafficking, guns and gangs and drug trafficking.”
London’s Chief of Police Thai Truong believes the budget is feasible and also says that London is the third most dangerous city in the province according to their recent crime data.
The budget will officially be brought to council on December 12, and Londoners can offer feedback before a final decision is made in 2024.
Comments