Integrated detachment was never explained
Editorial / Opinion

We understand that members of the Meaford/Thornbury Police were stunned to learn that switching to the OPP wasn't going to be exactly as they and the public had been told.

We were very concerned to learn that the new OPP detachment in Meaford won't be an "exclusive" detachment, but rather it will be an "integrated" detachment.

The difference between the two types of detachments aren't merely semantics, they're real, legitimate differences and in our opinion represent a major drop in the level of service presently enjoyed by the citizens of the former Town of Meaford.

Exactly how our town council figured it could get away with arbitrarily lowering police service in the former town, without notifying any of the town's citizens is beyond us. Council has determined that the municipality cannot afford the level of policing it has at present. The OPP practically guaranteed, at the council meeting following the unveiling of the two proposals, that they would be cheaper, despite the numbers contained in the documents. How can this be?

With an integrated detachment, "Meaford" officers will be dispatched to provincial and county duties. When they are off looking after calls in Grey Highlands and Markdale, Owen Sound, or wherever they are needed in the county, we will get a rebate. If they are going to rebate us more than $120,000 - the difference in the costings - "Meaford's" officers are going to be spending a lot of time out of this area.

We have a number of concerns with the current situation. Why were citizens never told this new OPP entity was going to be an "integrated" detachment as opposed to a "stand alone" detachment as had been discussed in the past? At the public police meetings and throughout the policing process our town council led us to believe that a switch to OPP policing would be almost unnoticeable. The officers would all remain the same, the would continue to exclusively patrol the Municipality of Meaford. The only difference would be their uniforms and the paint jobs on the cars. We were told any OPP detachment in Meaford, would be Meaford's OPP detachment, dedicated to patrolling this community and meeting its policing needs, not Grey County's.

This is not the case. An integrated detachment means that our officers, who we were told would be exclusively for Meaford, will now have to respond to calls all over the area of Grey County served by the Grey OPP. They will not be municipal police officers in an OPP uniform, they will be part of a regional force and their only contact with Meaford may only be to pick up a car at the police station. The police station that was bought and paid for by the ratepayers of Meaford, but now apparently it will be used by the OPP to serve all of Grey County. We're wondering, will the ratepayers of Meaford receive some sort of compensation for this new use of their police station? Or will they get stuck with a renovation bill in order "to meet the OPP's county-wide needs?"

We would like this council to explain why we're not getting the police service we were told we were getting. If they wanted to cut costs by reducing the level of service, they should have said so from the start.

We also have serious reservations about the actual numbers in the policing proposal. Under the OPP proposal the Municipality of Meaford will have a police to population ratio of 1 officer to every 728 citizens. Under the current Meaford/Thornbury Police Service the police to population ratio is 1 to 425. Those numbers are even more disturbing when you compare them to what our neighbours in The Blue Mountains are receiving. The population of the Municipality of Meaford is 10,200 and we're getting 14.01 officers, but remember two of the officers we're getting won't be available because they'll be on provincial duties. In The Blue Mountains, with a population of 6,000, they are getting 17 officers for an officer to population ration of 1 to 333. That is most definitely a reduction of service and this council again needs to explain why.