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Sudbury police adapting to operational challenges: Chief

Budget also in good financial shape amid COVID-19 pandemic, board is told

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“When I’m asked what’s changed, I say, well, everything has changed. But at the same time, everything has stayed the same.”

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Such is the situation for Chief Paul Pedersen and the Greater Sudbury Police Service, amid a pandemic that has created no small number of operational challenges, but has not prevented officers and civilian staff from carrying out their duties in the community.

“There’s still the same need for police presence in the area of prevention and there’s still the same need for police presence in the area of enforcement,” said Pedersen, while presenting a report to the Greater Sudbury Police Services Board on Wednesday. “I’m really proud to say that from an operations perspective, our entire operational team has stepped up to the challenge and continued to persevere.”

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When the province declared a state of emergency in March, in response to the growing danger posed by COVID-19, the police service had to quickly and efficiently develop a response plan of its own. Greater Sudbury Police immediately assembled its COVID Task Force, headed by Insp. John Valtonen, and including two staff sergeants, one sergeant, a finance manager, human resources manager, constables and civilian support staff, all of whom focused on the pandemic response, while putting their regular work portfolios on hold.

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Key activities included measures to reduce the number of people in all police buildings, with several reassigned to work at home. This required the establishment of work-from-home protocols and supervision, as well as the increased use of virtual communication tools such as teleconferencing, Zoom, WebEx and GoToMeeting.

Facilities have been retrofitted to prevent direct entry into police locations, including the downtown headquarters. The police service has acquired and deployed 57 laptops, as well as large amounts of personal protective equipment, or PPE, for its members. Cleaning and decontamination have been ramped up at all buildings and workspaces, and vehicles are now decontaminated at the end of each shift, using a newly purchased fogging system.

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The service is using single-person patrol cars, except in the case of recruits who are accompanied by coach officers.

Remote shift briefings are being conducted in the field, using hand-held devices, while online training is available for members both at work and at home.

As with other city employees, parking is provided and paid for if police officers and staff are required to go to headquarters.

“These do present operational challenges,” Pedersen said. “Our members, they take a few days off and it feels like everything they knew before their days off is completely new again. Kudos to Insp. John Valtonen, who leads our COVID task force, and also Kaitlyn Dunn, who is our corporate communications manager, who communicates all of these out to our organization and makes sure the members of our organization understand what they need to do their job day to day. We’re changing all the time, modifying all the time, and thanks to systems internally, we have been able to stay on top of this.

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“Despite our challenges with engaging face to face, engaging in crowds and engaging with the public with traditional methods, it hasn’t stopped us from engaging with the public with new methods, whether that’s National Day of Mourning, supporting Ontario Women in Law Enforcement, our videos for the Ontario Police Memorial and Const. Heidi Stevenson’s tragic death in Nova Scotia, Police Week activities from videos to tutorials, or Canada Road Safety Week.

“We have, I think, as an organization, done just a fantastic job of staying connected with the public, probably in the way the public is keeping connected now, which is more through video and social media than ever before.”

Pedersen also painted a positive picture of the service’s financial situation, despite more than $222,000 in COVID-related expenses, as of last week — mostly for PPE, cleaning and decontamination, and computer hardware.

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“There is some lost revenue, which isn’t included in this report, but as I think this board knows well, we don’t do a lot of revenue generation,” Pedersen said. “We’re not an organization that can charge fees for many of our services, so we’re not seeing as much of a hit on revenue losses as many the city overall is, or some of the other businesses.

“With respect to this budget, while it’s still early in the cycle, it looks like we’re pretty confident in saying any unexpected expenses, we’re going to be able to absorb it in the overall budget. We’re in a very comfortable position at this time of the year and confident that our business is sustainable and able to move forward.”

The police service has a budget of $62.7 million for 2020, up from $59.987 million in 2019.

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The police services board passed an operating budget of $62.95 million last October, but accepted a request from city council to make a $250,000 reduction.

Sharon Baiden, CAO for the Greater Sudbury Police, said the service is “really trending fairly well, despite the unanticipated and unbudgeted COVID expenditures.”

“We’re fortunate that our inventories of PPE are now starting to stabilize and that’s an expense that we certainly don’t anticipate is going to be growing at the rate at which it was. Cleaning and decontamination efforts to continue to be ongoing and in full force, and that’s a cost that I see will be with us until such time as we have an indication we don’t have to be as vigilant in this particular area.

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“Where we find that we’re incurring a lot of costs is in the decontamination of our vehicles, but we have just an excellent system where the vehicles are completely decontaminated at the end of every shift, so every vehicle that is on the road is decontaminated with an air-fogging system, and that is offering our members a significant reassurance, because they are in the units the entire shift, but the next member coming on is assured that the vehicle has been decontaminated.”

Meanwhile, Greater Sudbury Police has seen a decrease in fuel-consumption costs, due to the lower price of gas, and also a drop in travel expenses for out-of-town training.

“Fortunately, there was a lot of online training available already and since this has happened, we’re seeing many opportunities being presented,” Baiden said. “It’s something that has been welcomed by our members.”

bleeson@postmedia.com

Twitter: @ben_leeson

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