Petition calls for defunding of Regina Police Service

In the wake of the death of George Floyd and with a spotlight on police violence against people of colour, groups around North America are calling for the defunding of police departments — including the one in Regina.

A petition was started last week at change.org calling for Regina’s mayor and city council to vote against the Regina Police Service’s current budget.

The service’s budget is $96 million. According to the city’s 2020 budget documents, that’s a $3.6-million increase from 2019, and a $10.6-million increase since 2017’s budget. The police service’s expenses take up just over 20 per cent of the city’s overall budget for 2020.

The petition posits that the police budget is increasing while black and Indigenous-run community organizations are forced to turn to crowdfunding campaigns and small grants from the city to survive.

“They provide many of the same services as police, without requiring weaponry, communications departments, cells, or armoured vehicles. We should be funding community initiatives that support and centre the experiences of Black, Indigenous, and people of colour in Regina,” reads the petition.

The petition also talks about points of racism in policing’s history in Canada including the use of the RCMP in removing Indigenous peoples from their land and Neil Stonechild and the practice of “starlight tours”.

The petition asks the mayor and city councillors to pledge to six specific points:

1. To never again vote to increase the Regina Police Service budget.
2. To halt all hiring of additional officers, the purchase of additional equipment, and the planned expansion of the RPS headquarters and divest.
3. To prioritize the expansion of community-led health and safety initiatives over future financial investment into the RPS. Withhold pensions and don’t rehire cops involved in excessive force cases.
4. Require police to be liable for misconduct settlements.
5. Stop sending armed/uniformed officers on mental health-related calls.
6. Pledge to disarm and demilitarize the RPS (e.g. strip them of guns and military-style tactical gear, and dispossess of the tank.)

The person or people who started the petition aren’t named, they’re just referred to as “concerned citizens.” As of Monday evening, the petition had about 2,400 signatures.

Regina’s police chief

This is a time to listen to the community, according to Regina Police Chief Evan Bray, but he doesn’t think defunding the police service is the answer to the problems people are concerned with.

Bray said officers do a lot of work on social issues, that between two-thirds and four-fifths of the calls the police deal with have nothing to do with the Criminal Code.

“Most of what we do has to do with social justice issues: social determinates of crime, social determinates of health care, those types of issues. Mental health, addictions, domestic conflict, gang issues — those are rooted in what I would say are social-focused issues,” said Bray.

And he said there are other people who can do some of that work.

Bray talked about the community partners the police work with to get at the root of some of those social issues and the causes of crime, including programs for at-risk kids, mental health and addiction programming, and domestic violence programs. Bray said police usually have to step in when the issues have reached their crisis.

Bray welcomed a way to find partners to help police and deal with social issues so officers can concentrate on “true community safety work;” he said that would be a positive thing.

“It shouldn’t have to be an either-or conversation. So the conversation around funding the police shouldn’t be that we have to defund police in order to better fund other work that’s being done,” Bray said.

Bray pointed out that Regina has one of the highest crime rates in the country and police here are extremely busy.

“Our officers are working 24/7 and having trouble keeping their head above water as it is,” he said.

He said that community programming can produce results, but it’s slow, and the need for police isn’t going to go away in the meantime.

The petition calls for some specific things, like no additional officers and stopping the new police headquarters project.

Bray said they can’t do without things like those new officers.

When it comes to the police budget, Bray said the fact it makes up about 20 per cent of the city’s budget is fairly normal for the Regina police and police in Canada.

“I’m not going to hide from the fact that it’s a large amount of money, one-fifth of the city’s budget … but that portion or that proportionate share hasn’t grown out of step with the rest of the city budget,” said Bray.

In fact, while Bray said the police are adequately funded he also said that police resources haven’t kept pace with the growth of the city.

Regina’s mayor

Regina Mayor Michael Fougere (Lisa Schick/980 CJME)

The petition is directed at Mayor Michael Fougere and the rest of city council.  Fougere said there’s no doubt there are problems we need to deal with as a society, city council, and police service, but he doesn’t think defunding police would be the entire answer.

Fougere pointed out that many of the services that could be helped with money from the police budget — like mental health and addictions services, domestic violence services, and programs that fight homelessness — aren’t within the city’s jurisdiction, so the city wouldn’t be able to take police money and put it into those things.

When it was pointed out the city does do things like the Housing First initiative and giving grants to some community groups, Fougere said the city does what it can but that’s not enough.

“The issue becomes let’s build those partnerships (between governments) to ensure we do both — provide adequate support for the police service but also provide support for those who really need help,” said Fougere.

Fougere also talked about the city’s community survey, saying that people overall in the city are satisfied with the police service. He said that people expect to have a safe community and policing is one of the services the city is mandated to provide.

“If you defund police, who does the work? Who actually does that work to keep us safe? The proactive policing, the reactive policing? We have a major thrust of guns, gangs and violence here, and who takes care of that if not the police service?“ asked Fougere.