Robert Dickieson says his windows stay closed at night to muffle the sound of people screaming outside.
He now avoids a park off College Street he said he used to enjoy with his family because of needles on the ground, he told city council Monday. He recalled how he also opted against taking his two-year-old for a walk after witnessing someone with “severe mental distress” exposing herself in public.
Bev MacDougall, one of his neighbours, reluctantly called the Maria Street neighborhood her family has lived in for more than 40 years “the epicenter of despair in Sarnia.”
They were two of the delegations at Monday’s city council budget input meeting urging city council to accept the Sarnia police service’s draft 11.5 per cent budget increase when it returns at city budget deliberations Jan. 10.
All but 2.7 percentage points of that $3.14-million proposed increase in spending has already been approved by the service’s board to catch up to legislative requirements and align with best practices, board vice-chair Paul Wiersma said.
So if council decided to reject the proposal, cuts will have to come from the roughly $750,000 proposed for programs intended to help address a flood of concerns stemming from “extensive” consultation with officers and the publicChief Derek Davis said.
At least 100 people attended four town halls, and about 1,000 responded to an online survey, Wiersma said.
The money would go towards staff hires for auxiliary police volunteer training, a program expansion that helps keep police from tying up emergency room waiting areas with people suffering from mental-health issues, and to an Integrated Mobile Police And Community Team program in the works designed to liaise more closely with community agencies to help prevent people from engaging in criminal activity at all.
“We are trying to take an approach where we can partner better, where we can entertain people before they become an issue for us,” said Davis, noting, for example, one Sarnian has “been in contact” with police 289 times in the past year.
“If we can take that individual and prevent that from happening, or we can divert that individual to the resources and support that they require to put their life on track, that saves us money, that saves the taxpayers money, and we can redeploy resources for other places that they’re needed,” he said, calling the budget ask an attempt to do policing differently.
“This is starting to put us to where we need to go so we can better address the concerns of the community.”
The prevalence of guns, drugs and violent crime have all be on the rise in Sarnia, he said, noting the city’s violent crime severity index nearly double in 2021 when compared to 2013.
“It’s important to understand that the nature of crime in Sarnia has changed,” he said.
There were about 28,350 calls for service in 2018 but, so far in 2022, there have been nearly 31,600, he said.
People have said they feel less safe, he noted.
But the “pretty scary” prospect of an 11.5 per cent increase has been a thorny issue for Coun. Dave Boushy, who sits on the police services board.
Mayor Mike Bradley, who chairs the board, also voted there against the draft.
count. Terry Burrell Monday said the proposed spending increase and new programs, which would increase the service’s number of officers to 124 in 2023 from 117 now, was concerning and could be too much too fast.
Other city departments will be “squeezed” as a result, he said.
“People are hurting financially as well,” he said. “To think we can stick our hand in their pockets to solve somebody else’s problem, I don’t think is going to go over well.”
Dickieson, meanwhile, said he has considered leaving the city amid feeling trapped in his home, and wondered how many others have as well.
MacDougall said she worries city revitalization efforts will be sidelined if the despair punctuated by killings and fires in her neighborhood creeps further into the city.
count. Adam Kilner said he can’t justify inaction.
“For me, this is a moral issue,” he said after hearing from others, too, they feel trapped inside their homes.
Dickieson proposed Sarnia council also authorize as much as another $1.3 million for police to spend on things like a canine officer and crime analyst.
Those items and others, Davis said, were judiciously trimmed from this year’s draft amid considerable internal restructuring to penny-pinch.
But if council opted to approve extra funding, money for a canine unit would be top of the list, he said.
Currently, police rely on OPP for that service but can’t use it as often as they’d like because of availability and other issues.
A dog could have been used to help search for missing people or track suspects 80 times since July this year, according to front-line personnel, he said.