If you weren’t listening closely, you might have missed the middle finger, symbolically speaking, of course, that police Chief Bill Blair flipped Mayor Rob Ford last week. It came during that press conference last Friday, July 27, to announce a heightened police presence in at-risk neighbourhoods post-Danzig Street shoot-up.
Check the police video of the presser on YouTube. It’s definitely there, right near the end where the chief mentions, as an afterthought, that his plan to put some 329 more coppers on the street until Labour Day won’t cost the city an extra nickel. The money, he says, will come out of the current police budget.
Hard to see how the two-plus mil in overtime costs Blair’s plan will cost can be accommodated under current police budget constraints. The chief’s spokesperson, Mark Pugash, says he’s confident the police can cover the added costs.
But it was only a week ago that the mayor was at Queen’s Park asking the province for money that the city obviously doesn’t have to hire more cops.
Viewed in that context, Blair’s temporary safety initiative reads like one big “fuck you” to the mayor.
Ford has been content to squeeze the police budget and watch Blair, never his choice for chief, take the heat for the uptick in recent shooting incidents. Now it’s time for Ford to pick up the tab, or so Blair seems to be saying.
Historically, the city has given the police department extra funds for emergency expenditures or other unforeseen costs, topping up the budget at year’s end when necessary. The bottom line has never been written in stone.
And who would deny the cops a little more cash to help restore their fractured relationship with affected communities as a result of the recent gunplay?
Ford, for one. His administration set the police budget artificially low to create the illusion that spending was under control, while also ordering a hiring freeze on new recruits in each of the last two rounds of budget cuts.
Some might argue that the scaling back of police personnel has contributed to the intelligence gap on the ground that’s left the force scrambling for clues in the Danzig shooting.
Blair’s seeming open defiance of the mayor is not without political risks.
But where police politics are concerned, so far Blair’s proved a more able player than knee-jerk Ford.
enzom@noworonto.com | twitter.com/nowtorontonews
