RCMP aim to fill staffing gap in Moncton by summer

Codiac Regional RCMP's commanding officer says he's confident the force will hit its staffing quota this summer after fallingshy in recent years.

Codiac, which polices Moncton, Dieppe and Riverview, is budgeted to have 147 officers but due to a variety of reasons has often fallen below its target.

"We're on track to hit the 147 this summer," Supt. Ron DeSilva said during a Moncton council meeting Monday.

DeSilva said recently the force has had 121 to 131 officers available, though he didn't say exactly when. The force uses shifts, so not all work at once.

DeSilva spoke about the figures after introducing two cadets in Moncton for training. DeSilva said 16 cadets have come to Codiac this year.

The number of officers available to work versus those the force has on paper has garnered scrutiny in recent years.

DeSilva said that about 20 per cent of their officers are unavailable for frontline work.Some are on long-term leave, undergoing training, moving, or on parental leave.

That means the force often has fewer officers available than it does on paper.

Coun. Bryan Butler, a former Mountie, has repeatedly asked about the staffing figures during council meetings.

"I always worry about the operational guys, that number," Butler said Monday, referring to the figure representing officers available.

"The people that are off long term, you know, Ifeel for them. I hope they get better. But again, it's the people that are left behind to do the files and do the calls. And that's very, very hard when you get those numbers down, sometimes quite low."

Efforts to address the the issue go back years.

In 2018, a former Mountie told CBC that officers were overloaded as the number of calls police were receiving in the region climbed.

"Officers are tired,"L.P. Theriaultsaid at the time."They love their job, they love serving the public and doing the best they can, but sometimes the best they can is just not enough because there's not enough members."

In the force's 2019 budget, the number of officers was set to increase from139 to 144 at a time when the force's total calls for service was also rising.

In 2019one quarter ofshifts did not meet a minimum staff threshold. That led toother officers to work overtime orshifted from other police units like street crime and the general investigations section.

During discussions for the 2022 budget, then-Supt. Tom Critchlow said the force would backfill those without any change to the cost.

That's because those on leave longer than 30 days no longer fall under Codiac's budget and are instead covered by another RCMP budget.

By backfilling those officers with the money already budgeted, but not being used by Codiac, the force aims to hit its staffing target this year.

DeSilva, who took over as commanding officer last fall from Critchlow,said accounting for those on leave or otherwise unavailable to deploy, the force has closer to 170 officers.