Call it Cops, Inc. Profits are soaring. Work orders stream through the fax at headquarters on Eglinton Ave. W.
Employees are on the job across the city and easy to spot. They wear reflective yellow jackets and navy caps and holstered handguns. They stand on downtown street corners, sometimes leaning on a light pole or sipping a coffee.
Operating out of a city police station, this outfit, run by the police for the police, sells off-duty but armed Toronto officers as security and traffic control to municipal and provincial departments, construction firms, utility operators, community groups and funeral homes.
"Company" managers call their product "paid duty," their customers "clients." They are selling public property for private gain. And doing a brisk business.
Charging nearly double what an officer earns doing real police work, the company clears $24.8 million a year. If it were a publicly traded company, it would rank among the 150 most profitable in Ontario.
Taxpayers funded its startup. You paid to hire the workers and for their expensive equipment and prime office space. Think of yourselves as shareholders.
But forget about seeing any dividends.
A Toronto Star investigation has found paid duty is an unnecessary tax on the public, companies and community groups. Eliminating or modifying its use would save millions. Critics also say it cheapens police work, reducing frontline officers to overpaid flagmen.
"Who decided we actually need the officers on these particular assignments?" said city Councillor Pam McConnell, who serves as vice-chair of the Police Services Board. "When I talk to (other municipalities) around Ontario, nobody's ever heard of putting police officers to look down holes, to make sure construction sites are patrolled. I find the whole notion ... undermines their credibility."
Paid duty officers also get this extra money for guarding prisoners in provincial custody. And McConnell was surprised to learn from the Star that officers hire themselves out as security guards for the provincial government when disability support cheques are disbursed.
Police Supt. Earl Witty says having so many paid duty officers around the city increases the force's visibility and helps deter crime. Though Witty added the force is open to exploring a new system that could save taxpayer money.
"By having those paid duty officers out there, we have more public safety because we have more police presence," he said, adding that it was a paid duty officer who first tried to apprehend the Union Station hostage-taker in 2004. "Are there ways of saving money? Potentially. ... Is it good to re-examine things? Sure. We're always trying to be fiscally responsible, and if somebody's got an idea ... then let's take a look at it."
Officers work paid duty on their days off from policing. Constables receive $65 an hour and a minimum three hours per gig. Several officers told the Star that a city "bylaw" requires their presence at many paid duty jobs. But a city solicitor said there is no bylaw dealing exclusively with the issue.
Instead, a miscellany of provincial and city rules, unevenly applied and poorly understood, loosely governs this booming private police business.
No other major Canadian city spends nearly as much on paid duty. In 2007, Toronto officers pocketed 10 times more than their counterparts in Montreal, and the year after that 16 times what Ottawa officers earned.
On a recent afternoon, an officer stood on paid duty directly outside police headquarters on College St. while a construction crew refurbished the city-owned building's front steps. A worker said he had to hire the officer for a minimum of seven hours. At $65 an hour, plus related fees, that's a paid duty bill of more than $500 sent to the taxpayer. Another of the crew teased the officer for wearing a balaclava with the temperature above zero. "It's always cold when you're doing nothing," the worker said.
A retired police sergeant was more blunt in his assessment of what he calls a "cash cow" for Toronto cops: "There are times when you need that police expertise. But standing over a hole in the road? Like, can we get you a couch and a free cup of coffee, too? There has to be a better system."
The Star spoke to several officers working paid duty around the city. Many declined to comment. All refused to give their names.
When asked if $65 an hour was a waste of taxpayer money, a paid duty cop standing near a city work crew on Bay St. shrugged and spread his arms wide, saying "No comment" through a mouthful of breakfast sandwich.
Several officers said they do not decide when and where paid duty is needed, that city rules require it as a condition of construction and event permits.
Another, interviewed while nursing a Tim Hortons double-double on Adelaide St., said use of paid duty is sometimes wasteful and thinks lawmakers should fix the problem. "If there was a change, I would agree," he said.
Most paid duty requests originate from private entities, such as event organizers wanting crowd control, movie production companies required by the city to have police oversight of special effects, and funeral planners. The police force also maintains a fleet of 25 taxpayer-purchased cruisers – once used for real police work – for the sole purpose of renting them to bereaved families wanting funeral escorts.
But many paid duty requests come from entities spending taxpayer dollars. While it is difficult to determine exactly how much these off-duty officers have drained from the public purse, the Star has found taxpayers have been billed an estimated $9 million for paid duty on city infrastructure projects and special events since 2007.
The Star has also learned two provincial ministries spend taxpayer money on paid duty officers. The Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services hires officers to escort dangerous or high-profile inmates. A spokesperson said the ministry spent $2.7 million on paid duty in Ontario last year but could not say how much went to Toronto officers.
And the Ministry of Community and Social Services hires officers as security guards inside a downtown Yonge St. office where many needy Torontonians get their disability cheques. An officer who said he recently worked paid duty in the social services building explained that it was due to concern that recipients may get upset and unruly over the amount of their cheques. The ministry says it spends a total of $1,200 to hire two paid duty officers once a month for security and crowd control.
Though the amount is not known, another public impact can be seen in the paid duty cost passed on to ratepayers by essential utilities – such as city-owned Toronto Hydro – that are often required by the city to hire paid duty officers to guard and sometimes direct traffic around work sites.
Citing privacy concerns, the police force would not say how many paid duty requests originated from public entities in 2008.
City officials have expressed concern for years and ordered review after review but they have done nothing to fix a growing problem. McConnell said she is concerned the public interest is being abused and plans to raise the issue at the next Police Services Board meeting on Dec. 17.
The paid duty wage is almost double what a constable with four years experience earns on duty – $37.40 an hour – patrolling a dangerous area or answering a 911 call.
In addition, Toronto Police tacks on an extra 15 per cent "administration fee" that the force says is a "cost recovery" scheme to help pay for the office and staff handling requests as well as the use of taxpayer-purchased police equipment on paid duty. "It's at no cost to the city, to the taxpayer," said Witty.
But when the city or a provincial ministry or public-owned entity like Toronto Hydro is doing the hiring, it does cost the taxpayer.
In 2008, the force netted $3.7 million in administration fees, which goes into general police revenue.
Police leaders say there can be no other system, that a provincial traffic safety law and other rules allow only officers to do this work.
Sgt. Don Ryan, the man in charge of paid duty assignments, said there's a reason for this: "A civilian cannot do what we do."
In Calgary and Ottawa, where paid duty costs are significantly lower, civilians and inanimate objects do the job of Toronto officers. On a recent afternoon, a utility company work crew set up in the middle of a busy four-lane road, right outside a Calgary police station. The crew used pylons and yellow safety lights but no officer. "(Our system) appears to work," said police force spokesman Kevin Brookwell. "It has been working for some time."
Backed by what police say is a legal authority, and an uncontested hold on the market – Toronto officers get 42,000 requests for paid duty annually – the officers have raised their hourly rates every year. The wage has jumped 25 per cent since 2004. The powerful officers' union (the Toronto Police Association) – not the mayor or a city public works official or even the police force – sets the wage rate, and has done so unopposed since 1957.
"I think the system is fine," said Mike McCormack, the newly elected head of the union, adding it keeps on-duty officers focused on emergencies while leaving the other work for off-duty cops.
The Star was given no reason why officials could not write a new law or rule allowing other, cheaper traffic authorities to do the job.
"It's not to say others couldn't do that work or be trained to. It's not rocket science," said city lawyer Karl Druckman. "I think there's probably a way of dealing with it, to provide other people with authority to do certain things on roadways. It all could be changed."
The Star found the rules governing the use of paid duty unevenly enforced and in some cases blatantly ignored.
While a paid duty officer in reflective yellow jacket stood watching over idle construction equipment on Adelaide St., just a couple hundred metres west at another job site – the building of the Trump Tower – a young flagman for Grascan Construction Ltd. jogged out into traffic and stopped all three eastbound lanes so a dump truck could drive into the site. The episode backed up traffic into the Bay and Adelaide intersection.
Roberto Stopnicki, a top traffic management official for the city, said such a scenario would require a police officer. "Only a policeman has this authority," he said.
But the flagman told the Star an officer is not required. At a major development on Queens Quay, just east of Yonge, where multiple companies are working on a new office building, construction company flagmen stopped traffic in all directions on a recent morning to allow large trucks in and out of the job site. A foreman declined to comment on the absence of a paid duty officer, saying he did not want to get on the police force's "bad side."
An officer working a paid duty assignment on Yonge St., just north of College St., agreed that paid duty is required by the city inconsistently. While he spoke to a reporter for 30 minutes about why he is needed to help safely redirect foot traffic around the area barricaded by an Enbridge subcontractor, he paid little attention to jaywalking pedestrians. He would not give his name.
Upwright Sign Service paid $65 an hour for an officer to stand near a lift hoisting a worker level with a Royal Bank storefront sign at King and Jarvis Sts. A city official said an officer is typically needed whenever a sign company lifts something above the sidewalk.
Upwright vice-president Kip Panayiotou said of paid duty officers: "They charge an arm and a leg. I don't feel they're necessary." Panayiotou estimated he pays $10,000 to $15,000 to paid duty officers in a year and that he must pass that cost on to his customers. "It can make a client shy away (from hiring us) because all of a sudden there's an additional cost." He is also frustrated at what he says are arbitrary paid duty rules: On Yonge St. he is required to have two paid duty officers, one at King and Jarvis, and none in Scarborough. Panayiotou would rather give his money to a crossing guard, saying, "They could do the job."
McConnell of the Police Services Board said she does not know why crossing guards, who are regulated by the police force and get paid as much as $13.75 an hour, cannot do paid duty work.
"The people who are experienced in getting children across the street should be equally experienced at looking at a crane or telling people they can cross or stopping people from crossing because the dump truck is coming."
In Vancouver, where construction and road maintenance proliferates in the run-up to the Olympics, work crews are allowed to use their own "flagmen" to direct traffic with "Slow" and "Stop" signs. Vancouver officers on paid duty work collect a lot less than Toronto cops. In 2007, the last year for which data is available, they got only $1.3 million.
Vancouver police Const. Lindsey Houghton said that in the case of a large city construction project with significant traffic impact, the city uses "special traffic constables" who have authority to arrest and lay charges and who carry batons and pepper spray but no guns. The special constables get paid $33 an hour, about half the Toronto rate.
Some Toronto event organizers wonder why the city requires paid duty police officers as a condition of special event permits. Yvonne Bambrick, a coordinator of Pedestrian Sundays in Kensington Market, said in past years paid duty officers were required to stand near barricades blocking vehicle traffic.
"They really didn't do much. You had a different one every time. They didn't know about the event. They just stood there. They couldn't answer any questions," she said, adding that on-duty officers should have staffed the event. "It would have been interesting to have one of the local beat patrol hanging out and getting to know the community better."
Joe Eustaquio feels he is getting gouged by the police.
The organizer of the Portugal Day Parade said he is required to hire paid duty police officers to watch over his post-parade festival in Trinity Bellwoods Park.
Paid duty rules say that for every four constables hired, a higher-ranked officer is needed to supervise. But Eustaquio says in recent years he has been forced to hire one supervising sergeant for every two officers. A sergeant is not cheap, earning $73.50 an hour, for a minimum of three hours, on paid duty.
"I will have eight guys policing the park and four supervisors doing nothing. The costs are ridiculous," Eustaquio said, adding that the burden is one reason he has scaled the celebration from two days to one.
Supt. Witty said that while it is "highly unlikely" a customer would be asked to hire one supervisor for every two constables on paid duty, such a decision would be made by the police precinct in which the event is held.
The size of Toronto's paid duty industry seems unparalleled in Canada. According to data collected by the Toronto Police Services Board, Toronto officers netted $24 million in 2007. In a distant second was Peel Region officers with a profit of $4.4 million, then Montreal officers with a comparatively meagre $2.3 million. While 2007 data was not available for Ottawa, a senior officer told the Star his officers took in only $1.5 million in 2008 and are on track for around the same amount this year.
This system has been left virtually unchanged for half a century, though in 2002 the police force set up the Central Paid Duty Office to better manage the tens of thousands of work orders coming in each year and more equitably distribute the profits to the force's precincts. Chief Bill Blair is credited with setting up the office when he was working under then-chief Julian Fantino.
The operation seems to be running smoothly for officers as dependence on paid duty continues unabated.
At a time of recession that has hobbled many companies, Cops, Inc. has seen its profits soar about 50 per cent since the beginning of 2004. Demand is so high, Ryan needs nine clerks to handle all the work orders coming in to the third floor of 53 Division on Eglinton Ave. W.
"It's a very costly habit in a time when there's few enough resources to have regular workers on regular shifts," McConnell said, "let alone these officers who are not only on overtime, but over-overtime."
