Community group, city councillor say defund RPS petition starts important conversation

The idea of defunding the Regina Police Service or changing its funding has been garnering heated responses from both sides of the issue this week.

An online petition is calling for Regina’s city council to stop increasing funding to the service, stop hiring additional officers and stop the new headquarters project.

The money that would be saved through these measures would be put to community organizations that deal with social problems in the community.

One of the groups that could benefit is White Pony Lodge, a community watch group that walks the neighbourhood on the weekends doing things like picking up needles. It has managed to get an abandoned home torn down that was being used for illegal purposes and, before COVID, would often distribute meals and bread to the community.

Leah O’Malley is the chair of the White Pony Lodge board. She said it’s not the group’s place to have an opinion on the petition, but she said it is getting people to discuss some difficult topics.

“We really welcome this conversation and we want everybody to start talking about it. We need different solutions. Right now, we’re in a position where things do get better only when we talk about them,” said O’Malley.

The group’s members sometimes work alongside police and will let police know if they need help. O’Malley said they recognize the police service plays an important role in community safety.

“We also recognize that the Regina Police Service and pretty much all other police services have this expanding role that keeps on expanding into things that they’re not necessarily there for,” O’Malley said. “So issues such as mental health, family services, children’s needs, homelessness, and addiction, and these are all things that I think a police service is not designed for and possibly doesn’t even have the time or the ability to deal with.”

O’Malley said there are problems in the community they see that could really benefit from community groups and programs and those having more support.

“Especially addictions services,” she said. “I think that there are a lot of prejudices towards people who deal with addictions, and that can be racially motivated as well. And I think that it can cause a lot of problems in getting access or funding to services that really help them.”

Were the redistribution of some police funds to happen, White Pony Lodge could be on the list of those to benefit. However, O’Malley said there are likely other programs that would be higher on the list — those that really get into the nitty gritty and do the “really necessary” work to some solve of the issues in the community.

At the same time she said the group could always use more funding — it’s very small and relies almost completely on fundraisers and donations from the community.

Mayor Michael Fougere on Monday argued, in part, that taking money out of the police budget wouldn’t necessarily solve the problems the movement would want it to, because many of the issues like homelessness and mental health are under provincial jurisdiction, not municipal.

O’Malley said the city can still help out, whether it’s funding or whether it’s ensuring access for services.

“I think that the city has a very important role to play in terms of planning, and approval of putting in new buildings, new services, things like safe injection sites, things like SWAP, Mobile Crisis,” she said. “The city definitely has a huge role to play in that.”

City could help: Councillor

Ward 3 Coun. Andrew Stevens said city council has had many opportunities to help solve some of these problems with funding, outside of the police, but has repeatedly chosen not to.

“We have had ample opportunities in even the short four years that I’ve been on council to build those alternatives that would relieve pressure on the RPS. There have been conscious decisions to not invest in it or those decisions have been contested. And then every year when we say it’s too expensive, at least $3 million in operational revenue increases for police,” said Stevens.

Stevens said the city does put money into several organizations which could help with social ills like mental health and addictions, and homelessness, but it funds them too poorly.

He pointed to the plan to end homelessness as an example, saying that opportunities to spend money on it kept being batted away.

“At every turn when we’re, as a city, trying to think about ways of building alternatives within the parameters of the municipal jurisdiction, it’s either contested or defeated,” Stevens said.

Stevens praised Regina Police Chief Evan Bray and his counterpart in Saskatoon, saying that they’re ahead of many elected officials in Saskatchewan on this issue, supporting community alternatives.

Stevens said that each year around budget time, Bray tells council about the issues the community is facing and says they can’t keep dealing with them in the same way, but in the end council continues giving money to police in the same way.

“I would say it’s not a matter of jurisdiction, it’s about how ineffective our spending is at a local level on these complex problems,” said Stevens.

Stevens said council has finally recently given support to a community wellness and safety strategy, saying it’s the first time in his four years on council that councillors ever talked about what a safe community would look like outside of policing.

Stevens believes there’s also a problem with how the police fit into the city’s budget. He said there should be more council oversight than just the one time a year it’s presented with a police budget. He also thinks the police budget shouldn’t be a separate item, that there should be a chunk of money dedicated to public safety and community wellness, and policing should be a part of that.

“Policing should draw from an overall budget commitment and then we would have other money going into those support services and community organizations,” Stevens said. “I think we need to rethink the whole mindset of how we budget.”

Stevens said there’s an important and difficult conversation that needs to be had around what defunding means and even what abolishing the police means.

He’s planning to bring these issues up at the council table, though he predicts he’ll hear some objections.

Stevens’ ability to work on this issue could be a bit short, as there’s a municipal election in the fall and it will be a new council that will have the next opportunity to weigh in on the police’s budget in December. Stevens hasn’t decided whether he’ll run again.

Police union tweet draws response

The Regina Police Association went on Twitter on Wednesday to share a news story about the Regina Police Service’s cultural unit.

Do you support the “de-funding” of Police in Regina? If you do, this amazing work by our members will be one of the first to go. Choose wisely. https://t.co/G2PYD5La4a

— Regina Police Assoc. (@QueenCityPolice) June 9, 2020

Then the association added its own thoughts.

“Do you support the ‘de-funding’ of Police in Regina? If you do, this amazing work by our members will be one of the first to go. Choose wisely,” the tweet read.

By 4 p.m., more than 360 people had replied to the tweet, many saying it misses the point of the defunding movement.

The Regina Police Service responded to the association’s tweet by pointing out its Twitter handle. The RPS added that Bray addressed the defunding issue during a media scrum Monday.

While @QueenCityPolice advocates for our members, please note @reginapolice is our official account.

In a June 8th media scrum, Chief Bray addressed, among other things, the question of defunding police in Regina. WATCH for full context: https://t.co/RdVQ94lRvK https://t.co/YwPYT2Xx35

— Regina Police (@reginapolice) June 10, 2020