VPD says protests, playoffs explain $10M budget bust

The Vancouver Police Department is blaming an summation successful protests and different large events for already exceeding its yearly budget.

A study presented to the Vancouver Police Board successful September recovered that successful the 2nd quarter, the section was implicit fund by much than $10 million.

By twelvemonth end, the study forecasts that fig could beryllium down to $6.5 cardinal implicit budget, though that fig is hard to foretell owed to overtime, benefits and certainty implicit backing sources.

The section has attributed the bulk of the outgo summation to overtime related to protests, galore of them focused connected the Israel-Hamas war, and peculiar events including the Vancouver Canucks playoff run.

“The bulk of those constabulary officers that are staffing those protests are coming connected overtime due to the fact that we can’t gully our regular work officers from different neighbourhoods,” VPD spokesperson Sgt. Steve Addison said.

The constabulary committee study argues that without the large events, the department’s year-end projection would beryllium astir $3.5 cardinal implicit budget, nether 1 per cent of its $400 cardinal budget.

“Public information is the astir important contented connected people’s minds. People merit to consciousness safe, we’re not going to skimp connected nationalist safety,” Addison said.

“You can’t bash this worldly connected the cheap.”

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One metropolis councillor, however, says he’s acrophobic astir the department’s spending, and questions wherefore Vancouver is near to carnivore the fiscal outgo of events that gully radical from astir the region.

“We can’t consistently accommodate overages successful the aggregate millions of dollars and equilibrium budgets, it’s a challenging situation,” Green Coun. Pete Fry said.

“It’s surely the statement for a determination constabulary unit but possibly it could trigger a speech astir determination concern to enactment Vancouver policing successful the lack of a determination constabulary force.”

Vancouver constabulary accidental they are presently gearing up for events related to the one-year day of Hamas’ Oct. 7 onslaught connected Israel.

Vancouver Police Chief Adam Palmer is slated to supply an update connected those plans connected Friday.