Omni Television’s mayoral debate offered a telling lesson for the mayoral candidates on the do’s and don’ts of handling questions about policing and crime – especially when that question is being posed by one Julian Fantino.
Do: avoid the issue of the police budget at all costs, unless you’re proposing boosting spending on cops. Don’t: dare press the point that crime is down, even if it happens to be true, cuz no will believe you.
T.O.’s former top dick, recently retired as OPP commissioner, was in the audience at the Omni showdown, which aired Sunday, September 12. Fantino had a loaded one for the candidates.
What would they do to fight – wait for it – the perception that there’s an increase in violent crime?
Wow. And we thought the cops were doing a bang-up job fighting actual crime, which is down in all categories last we checked, including in double digits in some violent crime stats.
To a man, and woman, the candidates sucked on that offering from Fantino as if we were somehow living in the bad old days of runaway crime when gang-?obsessed Fantino was chief.
Joe Pantalone and Sarah Thomson did get around to mentioning current chief Bill Blair’s good work in reducing crime through community policing patrols. But just barely. Rocco Rossi deigned to utter the words “G20.”
But none of them dared say the unspeakable,? i.e., a review of the ballooning police budget, which is near $1 billion.
Tax-fighter Rob Ford wants to spend more on policing, promising to hire 100 more cops if he becomes mayor.
George Smitherman’s for hiring 50 new cops, but with money from efficiencies he says can be found in police overtime costs.
Though Thomson says the city’s debt has to be brought under control before it can spend money on hiring more cops, she doesn’t rule it out.
Like society’s perception of escalating crime, the police budget seems destined to keep going up, despite the bottom line that crime is down to its lowest levels in a decade.
