Officer overtime for protests and rallies related to Israel-Hamas war straining VPD budget

Since the latest war between Israel and Hamas broke out, thousands of people have taken to the streets of Vancouver to express solidarity with civilians killed on both sides of the conflict.

At each rally, protest and march, there are dozens of police officers – and most of them have been called in from days off to work overtime.

"Right now, we're going through a period of time where we are calling in a lot of officers from home,” said Vancouver police spokesperson Sgt. Steve Addison.

“We are simply not going to take resources away from another neighbourhood that needs that policing service in order to put them on the front lines of a protest."

Addison said there were a total of nine protests related to the conflict over the weekend, and that hundreds of additional officers were called in to work.

In addition to that, he said there were a number of extremely violent crimes that took place over the weekend, and some of them also required significant resources to deal with.

Those incidents include a ride hail driver slashed with a knife near Trout Lake on Friday evening, a man stabbed in the chest near Broadway and Fraser Street early Sunday morning, a man stabbed in the stomach near Granville and Smithe streets on Sunday afternoon, and a man slashed with a machete near East Pender and Columbia streets early Monday morning.

"It was a particularly violent weekend,” Addison said. “Our resources were stretched quite thin."

At a Vancouver Police Board meeting last week, Chief Const. Adam Palmer warned the extra overtime related to the ongoing protests could impact the VPD’s annual finances.

"This is going to be a budgetary issue because it's significant callouts, but we're not going to scrimp on public safety and we're going to make sure that we've got the right resources out there to keep the community safe,” Palmer said.

The police board is legally obligated to balance the VPD budget.

“The board’s finance, audit and risk committee will meet in the next few weeks to receive more information about the budget risk and how to work with the Chief Constable and City of Vancouver to manage risk while maintaining public safety,” said Frank Chong, chair of the board’s finance, audit and risk committee.

Mayor Ken Sim, who is chair of the police board, did not respond to a request for comment.

Green Party Coun. Pete Fry said he expects the VPD to cover any shortfall internally by finding ways to cut spending in other areas rather than going hat-in-hand to city council to ask for more money.

"We've just invested significantly in more policing. We have a hundred more police officers,” Fry said. “Where is the operational deficiency that doesn't have enough police officers to do that work on regular time as opposed to overtime?"

The VPD could not immediately provide an estimate on the additional cost to police the protests related to the Israel-Hamas war, saying that information would be part of the next quarterly financial report to the police board.