Niagara Police Services Board Chair says NRPS good news is overlooked
BY VOICE STAFF
Regional Councillor Bob Gale has been on the hot seat in his first term, primarily in his role as chair of the Niagara Police Services Board. And with nearly 90% of the police budget for Niagara ($145 million and climbing) tied to salaries and benefits, there is not a huge amount of wiggle-room to save the taxpayer money.
Gale bears an impressive résumé. A former constable for the NRP, Gale was the 1978 Police Officer of the Year, and also won the Medal of Merit. He left the force of his own accord in 1980 to take over his father’s fuel business, which he grew to 16 gas stations and convenience stores. One of his daughters now runs the operation.
His list of charitable work in Niagara and beyond is extensive. Decorated Rotarian. Canadian Red Cross Power of Humanity Award winner. Board member for the YMCA, Big Brothers, Boys and Girls Club. Coach of numerous sports teams, and major sponsor of the Gale Centre four-pad arena complex in Niagara Falls. And a Niagara Parks commissioner with a reputation for getting things done.
Gale acknowledges the past, but doesn’t want to dwell on it. The future is ahead. Hence, his frustration with some members of the media and colleagues on council, who continue to hammer away at prior decisions and pronouncements.
Gale was mocked when a news article reported that he characterized an $870,000 cash payout to former police chief Jeff McGuire as “a good business decision.” Then he referred to St. Catharines Standard reporter Bill Sawchuk as “collateral damage” with regard to the seized laptop incident at a Regional Council meeting last December, adding, “Bill’s a great guy. He accepted our apology. Let’s move on, people.”
Gale greeted his guest in the foyer of the NRP headquarters in Niagara Falls, a 215,000 square foot, $65 million complex opened in 2016.
He first addressed former Chief McGuire’s retirement package.
Since there is a “no disparaging comments” stipulation in McGuire’s agreement, Gale chose his words carefully.
“[McGuire] is on record in the media as saying that he was offered so much [money to retire], he had to accept it. I can tell you we never went in with ‘$870,000, here you are.’ It was all negotiated,” said Gale.
There has been heated discussion at Regional Council over the practice of NRP executive officers being awarded their service vehicle as part of their retirement package.
“That came up on a deputy-chief’s contract last year, and I said let’s end this right now—and we eliminated it right then and there,” said Gale, adding that Port Colborne's Regional Councillor David Barrick made the motion to stop the practice.
“I have a lot of problems with things that have gone on with past boards—that’s why I’m in politics.”
And while some councillors made reference to the Chief’s Buick Enclave as a $60,000 vehicle, the reality was, says Gale, that its value as a used car was much less, probably half that amount.
Gale was clearly miffed by the previous police board’s decision to extend McGuire’s contract in the final days of its term.
“The Municipal Act doesn’t govern the Police Act, so they were allowed to do that,” he said.
“Thirty-nine days before the election, they extended Chief McGuire’s contract from 2017 to 2020. Regional councillors asked the former police board chair [Henry D’Angela] about it, and he responded ‘That’s a personnel issue, I don’t want to talk about it.’ Other former board members said, ‘That was then, this is now.’ [Our board] could not understand the contract extension. They circumvented our whole board from looking at the future of this force. My board was so transparent, we volunteered the $870,000 out [to the public].”
Gale said that he did not covet the police board chair’s job.
“I wanted to learn [on council] and signed up for various boards—roads, public health, corporate services, planning. Regional councillors said, ‘We want to put your name in for the police board,’ and I said, ‘I really don’t need to be a police board member,’ but they voted me in there, and a month later they said, ‘We want you to be chair…you’ve run a company, you stand up for what’s right.’ So the next thing I know I’m chair of the police board.”
Councillor Andy Petrowski was elected vice-chair.
Things got off to a rocky start. Chief McGuire and Petrowski didn’t see eye-to-eye on a host of topics. McGuire eventually filed an Integrity Commissioner complaint against Petrowski (later withdrawn) over an email, and former Niagara Folk Arts Multicultural Centre executive director Jeff Burch (now the MPP for Niagara Centre) brought charges against Petrowski with the Ontario Civilian Police Commission over racial comments made on a local radio show.
“It was a poisoned atmosphere right from the start,” said Gale. Petrowski resigned from the police services board in January 2016.
“Andy has his assets, but his weakness is social media,” Gale said in an interview after Petrowski’s resignation. “Once you hit send, you can’t take it back. Twitter is a killer. I don’t use it, or Facebook,” Gale told the Voice.
Comments made by some of his colleagues on Regional Council stung Gale.
“The Mayor of St. Catharines [Walter Sendzik] was approached by the Standard for comment within twenty-four hours of McGuire’s retirement package announcement, and [Sendzik] said it was ‘Shocking mismanagement by the police services board,’” bristled Gale.
“He said this without knowing a thing, without asking me a question. There is collegial courtesy with a lot of the councillors at the Region, but not all. Some wanted to bury my board on this.”
Gale is quick to heap praise on the NRP uniformed leadership.
“We have a dynamic senior command team. I am so proud of Chief Bryan MacCulloch and Deputy Chiefs Bill Fordy and Brett Flynn,” said Gale, who also praised his fellow Police Board members and staff.
“Fordy was from the RCMP—he was a hire for which I and the police board took a lot of flak. The former chief didn’t want to hire from outside. Morale on the force right now is through the roof. Our chief, who was hired from within the force, is a real good guy, a reasonable guy, respected by all the people around him. We have American police officers coming over here to train with us—scuba, canine units. We are second to none with our service here.”
According to Gale, senior staff convinced the board that they could neutralize the payout to McGuire over three years, based on a plan to replace front-line officers on duty at the headquarters’ service desk with four re-purposed civilian employees, who earn considerably less than a first-class constable is paid in salary and benefits.
This move should save $200,000 per year, according to a 2018 police newsletter.
Additionally, hiring eight more officers is expected to bring down overtime costs significantly.
“We couldn’t hire eight officers this year, because the Police College in Aylmer was packed. So we hired four this year, and we’ll hire four next. We’ll see $300,000 in overtime savings this year,” said Gale. The net cost of the program is $304,309.
The NRP ran a $7 million dollar deficit in 2017.
“We had huge accumulated reserves, which we used to pay it down,” said Gale.
The deficit included $2.4 million in compensation for front-line officers achieved through arbitration, overtime and sick leave, and the ex-chief’s retirement package.
“I’m very proud of the wage hike under 2% that my board has managed through tough and innovative arbitration. Compare that to the wage increase over the past 20 years,” he said. The total police budget will climb 4% next year.
Community policing is a priority for Chief MacCulloch, says Gale.
“It started in Port Colborne, with business people and citizens pleaded for officers not to go back to the station to write their reports. They wanted them to write the reports in the cruiser, parked visibly on the street. It deters crime. The chief and deputies have gone to every detachment to say, ‘We want you out in the community.’ Officers need to park the cruiser and go for a walk through the neighbourhoods, meet the merchants and residents.”
Gale applauds the outreach programs the NRP has initiated with young people.
“We won’t take officers out of schools, even though they’ve done that in Toronto. Our officers go from school to school, meet the students. It’s so valuable. We have a huge opioid crisis. Deputy Chief Fordy has said, ‘We can’t arrest our way out of this.’ Back when I was a cop, we just arrested everybody. Today we know that education and sound parenting are critical.”
Police work is expensive business.
“Every major investigation costs us probably a million dollars. It’s a necessary evil,” said Gale.
He said that some elected officials in Niagara-on-the-Lake asked for more officers. Gale responded that "staffing is based on crime in your area, not tax levels. Do the math. If we dedicate another officer in a car 24/7, that’s four we need [based on four 12-hour shifts per week per officer] at $125,000 a pop. Half a million bucks, plus the cost of the vehicle and training.”
Thankfully, crime in Niagara is generally on a downward trend, although internet crime is on the increase, said Gale.
The NRP had 316 front-line officers in 2017, and will have 324 this year. A police newsletter indicates that 395 officers were on staff in 1980.
“That’s the year I left the force. Money seemed to grow on trees in those days—that’s how deficits grew,” said Gale.
“My biggest complaint [to the media] is if you’re just going to keep coming up with this $870,000, then you’re just out to bury us. We knew that eventually we’d come out of the deficit. We waited. We wanted the Chief to prove what he could do. I didn’t want this to come out years from now when I’m a public citizen, when some people say, ‘Hey, you screwed us out of $870,000,” and I’d have no way to explain the real story.” ◆
