The police budget is one of Toronto's largest expenses. Here's what you need to know about it

How much money do they need to get back to their 2010 levels of traffic enforcement? Should we just keep shoveling cash on the heap until they say stop?

Toronto police laid nearly 700,000 charges in 2010. In 2019 it was just over 200,000.

In 2018 it was 140,000, the lowest in a decade.

In a Sept 8-30 blitz in 2020 they issued 7138 tickets, even if they held up that rate for the entire year they'd still be well under 150,000.

What the fuck is going on over there? They reinstated the traffic squad and they still can't get to 25% of 2010 numbers.

There was a time where police were actually walking a beat. They were at traffic lights and school zones. Now they appear more as special forces types festooned with gear. It must cost a fortune to equip each officer. I am sure many officers want to do the job but what’s holding them back? Policing needs reevaluation. They are not the catch all for every social system in our society but they have to return to traditional policing.

Am I the only one who thinks 7.4% of the budget isn't a hugely shocking number for policing this city?

The bigger issue, in my view, is that we are not getting value for our dollar because we are seeing so little of a police presence, especially in patrols and traffic enforcement.

I've lived in my place for 15 years and know the whole neighbourhood. Not the cops though. They blow through the local intersections and wake me up with sirens but you never ever see them on foot walking a beat or saying hello. They're here to catch baddies after all - they don't have time to waste with "civilians".

They might be a bit more popular if we thought they worked for Toronto people, too. There's still a strong suspicion they're run like a street gang, by their boss down in Florida, for the benefit of anyone BUT Toronto residents.

Just a reminder that the police have multiple fully stocked bars in their stations across the city we pay for while they drink on the job.

Bruce McArthur fuck-ups, missing persons (i.e. Tess Richey), the Shermans double murder bumble, lack of traffic enforcement, car thefts etc.

Here's some recent examples of where our money goes

• Women impacted by 2000 bathhouse raid voice opposition to new anti-LGBTQ police chief

• The Toronto Police take THREE times longer than they should to get to the most urgent emergencies

• Toronto supervisor charged with misconduct over racist text messages

• Toronto cops caught on video blatantly breaking the law that they've been aggressively ticketing cyclists for

• Toronto police superintendent suspended after incident at Canadian police chiefs’ conference

• Toronto cop Matt Brewer drinks and drives, assaults helpless individual with weapon, abuses domestic partner with gun, fires gun dangerously multiple times, insubordinate to supervisor, harasses women, damages public property, drinks and drives AGAIN, and gets years of paid vacation. TPS doesn't fire him

• Toronto cop Patrick Stewart chases and assaults woman cyclist. Wife of Stewart, also cop does nothing. Other cops arrive on scene, but no charges

• TPS cop runs car through stop sign, hits cyclist, no charges

• Young man killed after Toronto cops physically assaulted him and ran away, it's been 15 months and still no answers, while cops enjoy long paid vacation

• Toronto cop ‘intentionally LIES’ in court, leading to major fentanyl case collapse. Same cop previously criminally charged with shooting

• Judge calls out Toronto cops for unprofessionalism while they sent funny texts to each multiple times during live domestic violence trial. The accused was acquitted.

• TPS cop already charged for theft, found to make ADDITIONAL thefts

• Former TPS cop tells police board she experienced a ‘poisoned’ culture for decades

• Police chief LIES; Law does not stop Toronto police from looking for officers behind ‘systemic discrimination,’ privacy commissioner clarifies, contradicting Chief's earlier claim

• Report shows almost 1/​3 of women at the TPS experience sexual harassment

• TPS admits that their own data undeniably shows systematically discrimination against Black people, uses more disproportionate amount of force which can only be explained by race of victim

• TPS bike cops continue wearing racist anti-Black flag on their official uniform This in spite they were told not to over a year ago.

• Drug case collapses bc Toronto cop "loses" video evidence and lies about it

• Investigation finds ~ 100 cases where TPS violate charter of rights. TPS say they're gonna "investigate" themselves

• High-profile Toronto cop convicted of impaired driving guilty. Enjoyed paid vacation and keeps his job

• ‘My father will never be the same’: Toronto police detective charged with impaired driving in crash that left Durham man seriously injured. Not fired.

We should cut it in half. Why the fuck should I pay so much money for a group of people that are completely untrustworthy and provide no visible value?

Have your house burglarized? They won't do shit. Your life in danger? They won't show up for hours in some cases and when they do? They won't do shit. Literally have video of someone stealing from you with a clear picture of that persons face? STILL NOTHING.

Your car can be physically stolen with a GPS tracker on it and they WON'T DO ANYTHING. Why are we paying for this?

We are getting almost nothing for our tax dollars. It's time to make cuts.

Defund healthcare!

>Heck yeah!

Defund education!

>Damn straight!

Defund police!

>Whoa, hey, slow down. Let's think about this first...

Imagine if we treated cops the way we do the TTC and told them they needed to fund their operations through ticket revenue - maybe they’d bother actually doing something about the horrific levels of traffic violations in this city instead of….whatever it is they do currently

we should be reallocating a large chunk of this money into communities and into mental health so every call for help isn’t responded to with a bunch of men with guns

I like how they always reference George Floyd, a man murdered by racist police in a foreign country, as the spark to action for looking at police in Toronto. Whether or not our police are racist or trigger happy has nothing to do with the horrible things happening in the US - can we stop pretending it does to push narratives?

All you need to know: it’s far too much for what we get in return.

They just aren’t delivering, if we gave them twice as much funding nothing would improve, the entire organization needs to be gutted.

The data from the article shows the mean salary (including OT) of TPS employees is $154K/​yr. Compare this to the mean general salary in Toronto of $52K/​yr - maybe the police budget would be better spent by cutting OT and hiring more staff at their standard hourly rate. Am I missing something?

Police don’t want to do shit, so why the fuck are we paying them. They need to be held accountable for their budget.

Everyone who is asking to defund the police are living in blissful ignorance. Serious crimes happen with a police presence in our communities. If the police were no longer around it would be carte blanche for criminals. Things are bad now but some people don't realize it could get alot worse.

It's always been funny and backwards to me that most officers make more than the defence lawyers and Crown attorneys litigating all the charges laid by them. It doesn't make much sense.

The moment I saw an officer grab his jacket from his brand new BMW i4 M50, I knew our blue boys were doing alright financially.

Meh. I'm going to have to go against the Reddit hive mind on this one.

Anyone who's driven a car or ridden a bike in this city, knows that we probably need MORE policing in Toronto, not less. I consider race issues and police brutality a separate issue.

The police service is just underfunded like every other city service is. The roads are falling apart. Public trash bins are overflowing. Public transit, parks, libraries. Take your pick. Everything is disgusting and falling apart due to severe underfunding.

Coincidentally, we also have lowest property taxes of any city in Ontario. And, much, much, lower property taxes compared to most "world class cities" our size. What a strange coincidence.