A busy 2019 behind the scenes for Chatham-Kent police
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Everything from drugs, weapons and property seized to 911 calls and prisoners coming and going from court is handled by the administrative support branch of the Chatham-Kent Police Service.
And 2019 was another busy year.
“This is the behind-the-scenes group. These are the people that we don’t see day to day, but day to day are doing what needs to be done to in order to make the police service work behind the scenes,” said Insp. Mike Domony, who is in charge of the administrative support branch.
There were 359 occurrences of drugs being seized last year, according to a recent report presented to the Chatham-Kent Police Services Board.
Hard drugs and opioids made up the majority of seizures by police last year, with methamphetamine comprising 31 per cent. Fentanyl accounted for 10 per cent of seized drugs while cocaine and hydromorphone each represented eight per cent. Other harder drugs seized during the year included heroin, oxycodone, crack cocaine, ecstasy and psilocybin.
Processed marijuana accounted for another 16 per cent of drugs seized in 2019.
Firearms officer Const. Dwayne June told police service board members the Chatham-Kent service saw slightly fewer weapons in 2019 but noted in his report that a gun amnesty was conducted in 2018.
“We had 369 exhibits come through the firearms office … compared to 381 in 2018.”
June said the items seized in 2019 ranged from long guns to prohibited weapons, conductive energy weapons (Tasers), swords and knives.
Non-restricted weapons, such as rifles and shotguns, accounted for 102 of the items seized, along with 103 ammunition exhibits of various amounts and calibres, he added.
A total of 23 restricted firearms – handguns – were seized, along with 77 pellet and BB rifles, pistols and replica firearms. Other weapons seized included prohibited devices such as overcapacity magazines, pepper spray and mace, along with crossbows and knives.
Local courts were busy with an increase in both prisoners and audio/video remands, leading to some delays, which Domony said added stress because criminal courts need to clear cases in a certain amount of time.
This resulted in court occasionally sitting later in the day, which led higher costs. As a result, overtime costs amounted to $42,732.18 last year compared to $33,067.03 in 2018.
The report noted the number of prisoners processed in 2019 increased to 2,238 from 2,087 in 2018.
Audio/video bail hearings also jumped to 2,386 last year, compared to 1,767 in 2018.
The emergency communications centre was also busier in 2019, answering a total of 184,461 calls, an increase of 2,179 calls from 2018.
Calls for police service accounted for 94,817 of the calls, up 2,179 from 2018.
There was also 35,033 calls to 911 last year – up 1,359 from the year before – with 12,301 calls for the Chatham-Kent police service and another 2,384 for OPP.
However, more than 8,300 911 calls were either abandoned or dialed in error.
Sheri Somerville, the centre’s team lead, said work is continuing on the transition to the next generation 991 system, which will be internet based.
“With that comes a seamless service, intended to be coast to coast throughout Canada,” she said.
Somerville said the current system was supposed to be decommissioned in June 2023, but that is now pushed out at least a year to June 2024 due to the pandemic.
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