Shoplifting and mental-health calls are on the rise as Bradford and Innisfil head into the holiday season.
South Simcoe Police Service Deputy Chief Sheryl Sutton provided the monthly operational update for November during the Dec. 13 police board meeting at Innisfil Town Hall.
The operating report showed 2,027 total calls for service in November “and it doesn’t get more equal than this one,” with 49.87 per cent in Bradford and 50.13 per cent in Innisfil.
“Yet again, Patrol B and Patrol E had exactly the same number of calls for service,” Sutton said.
Patrol Zone B is in Innisfil, east of Sideroad 10 between Line 5 and Line 9, while Patrol Zone E is in Bradford from Holland Street south.
While the deputy chief noted calls for service have increased from 1,957 in November 2022, the month also continues the trend started in July of calls for service being down slightly compared to the same time in the most recent pre-pandemic year of 2019, which saw 2,190 calls in November.
Up to the end of November, 2023 has seen 27,870 calls for service, compared to 27,784 in the same time in 2019, which had 29,738 by the end of the year.
Chris Gariepy, board chair, asked if this will be the busiest year on record so far and Sutton replied that it will be “very, very close to 2019. It’s a race.”
Similar to previous months, only 48 of this November’s calls for service were the highest priority.
There were some areas in which calls increased in November 2023 compared to November 2022, including:
- Shoplifting calls increased to 13 from 4
- Mental-health calls increased to 25 from 10
- Assaults increase to 19 from 11
- Commercial break and enters increase to three from one
- Provincial offence notices increased to 319 from 278
- Fraud calls increase to 26 from 23
However, there were other areas in which calls decreased in October 2023 compared to October 2022, including:
- Vehicles stolen decreased to nine from 27
- Thefts from vehicles decreased to six from eight
- Domestic calls decreased to 55 from 69
- Impaired calls decreased to 21 from 26
- Landlord dispute calls decreased to 15 from 18
- Bylaw calls decreased to 12 from 17
While she acknowledged that “mental health calls are up significantly from this month last year,” and “shoplifting is up substantially compared to 2022,” Sutton noted that there were “no alarming trends there,” and also pointed out that “our stolen vehicles are down significantly from this time last year.”
Sutton also pointed out that while impaired calls may have decreased, the Festive RIDE program had already made eight impaired arrests since the start of December, with five in just six days.
Of particular interest to Sutton was the time of day those arrests were being made.
“We all just assume it’s late at night on weekends, but the majority have been in the morning and the middle of the day,” she said, giving examples of 6:30 a.m., 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. for when the arrests are being made.
“Just because you’ve gone to bed and had a few hours of sleep, people are still over the legal limit,” she said.
Eleven months into 2023 the service had issued 6,827 provincial offence notices, a jump from 4,567 by the end of October and more than the 4,150 issued in all of 2022, many related to traffic.
Unlike at some recent meetings, the statistics from the municipal speed cameras were not available due to the “pretty quick turnout” between meetings.
Innisfil Mayor, Lynn Dollin said she understood the red light camera at the intersection of Highway 89 and County Road 27 was activated a week ago, but there was no data to report yet.
Collisions
November saw 152 motor vehicle collisions with 65 in Bradford and 87 Innisfil. Out of all of those 110 resulted in property damage and 26 resulted in injury, but none were fatal.
“Interestingly enough for the Town of Innisfil, Innisfil Beach Road, Yonge Street and 10th Sideroad, that’s where our collisions seem to be occurring, our major north-south routes,” Sutton said.
Gariepy suggested the issue could be attributed to “those people that want to get off the 400 and they’re in a hurry.”
Dollin noted that residents don’t seem to be as concerned about those areas.
“I rarely if ever get calls complaining about the speed on roads that are getting all the accidents,” she said.
A majority of collisions in Bradford continue to be along Holland Street West and the connecting roads.
The total number of fatal collisions sits at six, with three in Bradford and three in Innisfil, following this crash Wednesday.
Crisis Calls
Crisis calls decreased slightly in November to 48 compared 55 in October, with eight of November’s calls handled by the Crisis Outreach and Support Team (COAST), while 40 were handled by front-line officers.
Sutton had previously explained that the issue came down to timing, with many crisis calls coming in at times when crisis workers weren’t available, and gave examples such as 11 p.m., 1 a.m., 3 a.m. and on weekends.
To help address that issue the province announced $117,865 in funding through the Mobile Crisis Response Team Enhancement (MCRT) grant on Oct. 27, and Sutton is hopeful that will allow the police partners at Canadian Mental Health Association Simcoe County and Your Support Services Network to fund extended hours for crisis workers.
For the first time since January, wait times for officers offloading patients at Newmarket's Southlake Regional Health Centre exceeded those at Barrie's Royal Victoria Health Centre, averaging 2.2 hours and 1.8 hours respectively.
“There’s a bit of an anomaly here,” Sutton said.
In response to Bradford Mayor James Leduc asking what caused the change, Chief John Van Dyke responded that “it could be one outlier call where they (the officers) had to spend eight hours. That can skew your numbers.”
Under certain circumstances, officers who encounter people in crisis may take them to hospital for assessment, but must remain with them until they are admitted, which has been an ongoing issue for the service.
Looking to 2024
The chief provided a verbal update of recent activities, in which he said the new crown brief unit is “fully up and running” as of about two weeks ago and expected help free up time for officers to spend on patrol by having two clerks help file reports.
“So far it’s in the infancy, but it’s been very well received,” Van Dyke said.
The board is hoping to expand the unit to three clerks if their budget is approved by the municipalities of Bradford and Innisfil.
The service is also expecting have more resources to tackle auto thefts next year, as joint auto-theft unit in partnership with Barrie police is expected to launch in the new year, thanks to $1.8 million in funding over three years from the provincial government.
The chief also praised the shared response canine pilot project with Barrie, through which the service now has canine coverage 20 hours a day, seven days a week, compared to previously only having one dog.
As a result, the chief said the service will not need to take on a second canine unit next year.
“As the board knows, canine units are very expensive,” he said.
