Police board questions value of work municipalities want before they make RCMP decision

The board overseeing the Codiac Regional RCMP has voted to delay work that Moncton, Dieppe and Riverview want completed ahead of deciding whether to keep the Mounties as their police service.

The Codiac Regional Policing Authority board voted unanimously Thursday to hold off asking the RCMP to carry out a workload analysis.

Board members, including councillors from the three communities, said they didn't understand why the analysis was sought and worried it would affect work the RCMP plans next year.

"It's not going to help us know how to intervene when we have an increase in the number of theft, or break and enters, or domestic violence cases," board member Véronique Chadillon-Farinacci said Thursday evening.

Policing study called for analysis

The vote could affect how quickly the municipalities decide on whether to change police services following the release of a study by Perivale + Taylor. That study .

The consultants recommended the workload analysis to help determine the right number of officers for a police force.

The study says the analysis would consider "allocated time," or how much time an officer spends at a crime scene, carrying out followup investigations, and then returning to service. It would also consider "proactive time," which is when an officer does patrols without a specific call for service.

The consultants, using RCMP data, calculated Codiac RCMP's allocated time at 30 per cent. The study says it's closer to 50 per cent for comparable police forces.

The consultants warned of challenges with the figures. Their report says Codiac RCMP warned the data from their own records was "incomplete and unable to accurately measure allocated time."

Analysis could take months

The report says the police records system wasn't being used as well as it could be to track officer activity.

That limited the consultant's ability to assess police workload, something used to calculate how many officers are needed to police the three communities.

As a result, the consultants recommended the analysis which could take two to three months.

In late October, Moncton councillors voted to ask for the analysis.

"I think that the workload analysis is the crux of all of this, and we need to figure that out so that we can make informed decisions," Moncton Mayor Dawn Arnold said at the time.

Arnold, Riverview Mayor Andrew LeBlanc and Dieppe Mayor Yvon Lapierre asked in a Nov. 22 letter for the analysis to be completed by Feb. 1.

Don Moore, the board chair, said responded to the mayors asking if there was anything they specifically wanted as part of the analysis.

"I have never received a response to that email,"  Moore told the board Thursday.

Don Moore, chair of the Codiac Regional Policing Authority board, says he's yet to get a response from the mayors about what they want from the analysis. (Shane Magee/CBC)

The board voted to table discussion of the issue until its next meeting, which is scheduled for Feb. 8, after several voiced confusion.

"I think there's some added information here that we could have and benefit [from] so that we're not asking people to work triple overtime over Christmas to hit a false deadline," said Corinne Godbout, who is also a Dieppe city councillor.

"Is this a true urgent deadline, or is this a 'would be nice' category? I'm conscious of, again, not getting sidetracked by somebody else's agenda and us staying on ours."

Charles Savoie, the director of strategic planning and policing support services, told board members the RCMP already plan to do a workload analysis in 2024 but that it may not be complete until mid-year.

"A municipal force or an RCMP force would have similar workload," Savoie said.

"The workload is the workload. So why that would be so important to determine if you wanted to maintain your RCMP or municipal force is a little bit lost on us. But we're going to do it."

Moncton's timeline

The board's vote could affect a timeline Moncton councillors have laid out for its policing debate.

Councillors Daniel Bourgeois, Charles Léger and Bryan Butler were tasked with gathering questions from municipal staff and councillors the policing study may not have answered.

The 47 questions complied include the "real" cost of a transition to another force, whether the province would help fund a transition, legal barriers to moving to a municipal force, and what would happen if the three communities don't agree on what to do.

Bourgeois said during a committee meeting last week that they want to finish a report with answers by early March.

"There is a decision to be made by the 31st of March- if city council was going to abandon the RCMP in favour of a municipal police force," Bourgeois said.

The 20-year contract between the RCMP and policing authority allows either side to terminate the agreement on March 31 of any year with 48 months notice.

The Perivale + Taylor study recommended keeping the RCMP, suggesting a transition to a new police force would cost $73.5 million. Councillors have questioned the figure because more than half of it is a contingency.

The consultants estimated 20 to 30 more officers would be required than the current 152 to replace specialized policing services, such as forensics, provided by the RCMP.

The study also called for improved policing authority governance and better communication between the board and three councils.