Despite asking for more money for new hires, the Waterloo Regional Police Service says they are working to modernize to keep the budget under control. 

As the region gets bigger, the force says more officers are needed to maintain service, but they are looking for ways to be more efficient.

Police Services Board chair Tom Galloway says "The police is the largest single expenditure in the regional budget."

For 2012 the force is asking for $8 million more in its budget than the previous year, despite the economic uncertainty that has many cutting back.

Bruce Tucker, president of the Waterloo Regional Police Association, says "Because we're tasked with more you've got to take a look at policing as a job unto its own. What I mean by that is we have standards on us that doesn't happen elsewhere in the work world."

According to Statistics Canada, in 2011 Waterloo Region had fewer officers per 100,000 people than other parts of southwestern Ontario:

  • 211 in Windsor
  • 164 in Niagara Region
  • 155 in London
  • 153 officers in Hamilton
  • 139 officers in Waterloo Region

The crime rate is higher in all of those areas, but Waterloo Regional Police Chief Matt Torigian says there's another important statistic to consider.

"Each year, for the last three years, we have seen an increase in the violent crime severity index."

Regardless of the crime rate or number of officers, Galloway says many municipalities share the same problem, an annual budget increase of five, six and seven per cent.

He says "There really does need to be some discussion about sustainability of policing as we know it."

In Waterloo Region that discussion has already begun, and the police service says it's working on a number of ideas to modernize how things work.

"There are alternative methods of service delivery that we need to look at in order to ensure that we can be as cost-effective as possible," Torigian says.

One idea that has been implemented is redesigning nearly 40-year-old divisional boundaries for its patrol zones, cutting the amount of time an officer spends outside their zone.

While the police service says it has been making some gains, it's still not keeping pace with the growing demand in the community.

They have had to take 50 officers from investigative departments and put them on patrol to deal with the demand on the front lines.

Tucker says "When we robbed Peter to pay Paul, meaning we took from the investigative services to the front line, we did the public no service. We helped out patrol, we helped people in the immediate need of response, but the investigations have suffered as a result."

Torigian didn't comment directly on how this has affected the investigative departments, but says the service needs to be more proactive.

That means catching more impaired drivers, looking for more offenders and arresting more people wanted on warrants.

"From all the data and the analysis," Torigian says, "we know that we actually have three people being added to the warrant list, yet we're only arresting two. So the list is growing."

The force is also trying to reduce the number of patrol officers sent to calls that aren't emergencies.

That means handling something like an overnight theft from an unlocked vehicle, for example, over the phone. And by the end of 2012, you should be able to report those types of incidents to police online.

But Tucker says, "As for going with online services, I don't think that's the way to go. I'd like the public to get involved in this, and determine what services do they think the police service has to provide and what level of service they want on that."

According to Torigian, if none of these measure had been implemented, the service would have needed 150 more officers, instead of the 60 that have been approved over the past three years.

Coming up in part three: What's next for the WRPS and policing in the community, especially if all the new hires aren't approved.