The Safety & Policing File

What cities try for this. Evidence for, evidence against, real costs, and who actually decides — for every option, identically. We don’t pick one. That’s the candidates’ job.

More sworn officers

Raise the force's authorized strength beyond the 97 growth officers already funded through 2027; or, from the other side, decline to renew that trajectory in the next multi-year budget. London had 698 actual officers in May 2025 against 737 authorized.

□ SHARED — CITY + PROVINCE

THE EVIDENCE, THE COSTS, WHO DECIDES▾

EVIDENCE FOR

The best-identified American evidence finds more police reduce serious crime: a measurement-error-corrected study puts the effect at roughly a 5% drop in cost-weighted crime for a 10% force increase, concentrated in violent crime. NBER working paper ↗
A 2022 study across US cities: each additional officer abates approximately 0.1 homicides, about one homicide prevented per ten officers added, with per-capita effects twice as large for Black victims; larger forces also made fewer arrests for serious crimes. AER: Insights ↗
A US federal hiring-grant study found each added officer prevented about 4 violent and 15 property crimes, and put the social value of a marginal officer above $300,000. Journal of Public Economics ↗
How officers are used matters as much as how many: hot-spots policing (concentrating patrols on the small map areas where crime clusters) is rated Effective by the US National Institute of Justice's evidence registry, with modest average effects. NIJ CrimeSolutions ↗

EVIDENCE AGAINST / LIMITS

The same 2022 study cuts the other way in the same abstract: larger forces make more arrests for low-level "quality-of-life" offences, "with effects that imply a disproportionate burden for Black Americans." Quote the two halves together or not at all. AER: Insights ↗
The Canadian record does not show the American relationship. Public Safety Canada's own research synthesis: police resources returned to early-1990s levels while crime fell 46% since 1991, and across provinces and cities police levels and crime rates "can often be positively correlated." London's own tables fit the ambiguity: total crime severity fell from 2022 to 2024 while officers were being added, and the violent index began falling in 2022, before the hires ramped. Public Safety Canada (PDF) ↗
Approved positions are not filled positions. Ontario faces a province-wide police recruiting shortage: services launched a joint recruiting campaign in July 2025 amid staffing shortfalls, and the province expanded police-college intake. There is no published tracker of London's progress toward the 97 growth positions. CBC ↗
The response-time case is genuinely split: the classic Kansas City finding is that response time doesn't affect arrests for the large share of crimes discovered after the fact, while the modern UK evidence says faster response improves clearance of in-progress calls. A candidate selling officers on response times owes voters which call types they mean. LSE working paper (PDF) ↗

WHAT IT COST ELSEWHERE

The unit price at home: an LPS first-class constable's base salary is $120,445 to $131,285 on the July 2025 grid, before benefits, equipment, and supervision. A fully loaded average across the whole service works out to roughly $151,000 per employee, an average across all ranks and civilians, not a hiring quote. LPS salary grid ↗

AT LONDON'S SCALE — ARITHMETIC SHOWN

Ten additional officers cost about $1.2 million a year in base salary alone. Closing the gap to the Ontario-average staffing rate would take roughly 170 more officers, $20 million-plus a year in base salary, more than two points of tax levy, before civilian support, vehicles, or facilities. A candidate promising "average staffing" owes voters that number. StatCan Police Administration Survey ↗

□ SHARED — CITY + PROVINCEThe board and chief control positions and deployment; council votes only the total; the province holds the arbitration backstop. The next multi-year police budget will be set by the council and board chosen after October 26.

Co-response and civilian crisis teams

Pair health workers with police (London's COAST model), or send civilian teams instead of police (the Toronto and Denver model), for mental-health, addiction, and social-disorder calls. Co-response means a health professional attends alongside an officer; civilian dispatch replaces the police response entirely.

□ SHARED — CITY + PROVINCE

THE EVIDENCE, THE COSTS, WHO DECIDES▾

EVIDENCE FOR

Denver's randomized rollout of civilian teams cut reports of targeted low-level offences (trespass, public disorder) by 34% in served areas, at a direct cost of $151 per offence reduced versus roughly $646 for criminal-justice processing of a comparable offence. Science Advances ↗
Toronto's Community Crisis Service at scale: 29,000-plus calls from March 2022 to July 2025, and in 2024 it handled 78% of 911-transferred calls with no police involvement. It expanded citywide in September 2024, three months early. City of Toronto report (PDF) ↗
London's own COAST diverts 100 to 150 client calls a month from patrol, with over 80% client satisfaction, per Carleton University's early evaluation. CBC ↗

EVIDENCE AGAINST / LIMITS

The model's 36-year flagship collapsed: CAHOOTS in Eugene, Oregon shut down in its home city in April 2025 over funding, with the city contract covering only about 40% of its cost. The economics depend on someone paying, and the payer blinked. OPB ↗
The rigorous evidence is still thin: a police-chiefs' association review calls co-responder evidence "preliminary," with few evaluations that assess impact rigorously, and no completed high-grade systematic review exists yet. IACP review (PDF) ↗
Scale is the other limit: health-related calls are about 7% of police workload in a Detroit replication study. Diverting them improves those encounters; it does not much shrink police budgets or touch violent crime. Police Practice and Research ↗
Denver's own study found no detectable effect on more serious crimes, and its authors flag that part of the 34% drop may be a reporting artifact, since health responders file fewer offence reports. Science Advances ↗
COAST's evaluation found no evidence of better treatment outcomes downstream; in the evaluators' words, it "isn't having a broader, more pervasive impact." CBC ↗

WHAT IT COST ELSEWHERE

Toronto's service cost a verified $13.7 million in 2023 for a city of about three million; later reported figures ($31.7M in 2025) rest on weaker sourcing. City of Toronto report (PDF) ↗
Eugene's CAHOOTS self-reported about $2.1 million a year while handling 17% of police call volume, with police backup needed in under 1% of calls. Operator-reported figures, not audited ones. White Bird Clinic ↗

AT LONDON'S SCALE — NOT DERIVABLE FROM PUBLIC DATA

COAST's budget is unpublished, so a London expansion cost cannot be derived from public sources; that is the first costed question for any candidate proposing one. For scale only: a Toronto-per-capita equivalent would be roughly $2 to 2.5 million a year for London's population, but Toronto's is a civilian-dispatch model, not COAST's police-paired model. The models are not interchangeable, and neither has a published London price. City of Toronto report (PDF) ↗

□ SHARED — CITY + PROVINCEShared: the partner agencies (police, hospitals, CMHA) and the police board control staffing; the province holds health funding; council holds city grants. A 911-diversion model like Toronto's would also need dispatch integration the city does not control alone.

Prevention and upstream spending

Fund programs that reduce offending before it happens: cognitive-behavioural youth programs, summer jobs, street lighting and design, violence-interrupter models. The evidence belongs to specific program models, not to "community programs" in general.

■ CITY DECIDES

THE EVIDENCE, THE COSTS, WHO DECIDES▾

EVIDENCE FOR

Becoming a Man, a Chicago cognitive-behavioural program for teen boys, has two randomized trials behind it: violent-crime arrests fell 45 to 50% during the program, with estimated benefit-cost ratios from 5-to-1 to 30-to-1. Quarterly Journal of Economics ↗
Summer jobs: Chicago's program cut violent-crime arrests 43% over 16 months in a randomized trial, with most of the decline arriving after the eight-week job ended. Science ↗
Street lighting: a New York public-housing randomized trial found, at minimum, a 36% reduction in night-time outdoor serious crime; the US evidence registry rates improved lighting Promising. NBER working paper ↗

EVIDENCE AGAINST / LIMITS

The same results look smaller in standardized terms: an independent re-analysis rates the youth program's arrest effects as small, large percentage drops off a low base. Both descriptions are true at once. Evidence for ESSA ↗
Scale-up at the hardest end is unproven: a randomized trial with men at extreme risk of violence in Chicago found no statistically significant change in its primary serious-violence measure. NBER working paper ↗
Violence-interrupter results are genuinely mixed across cities: mostly positive in Chicago evaluations, inconsistent across sites in Baltimore. John Jay research review ↗
The verified effects belong to specific program models measured over one-to-two-year research windows, and prevention pays off on horizons that outrun budget cycles and council terms. That is an analysis point, not a cited finding.

AT LONDON'S SCALE — NOT DERIVABLE FROM PUBLIC DATA

No consolidated crime-prevention budget line exists for London, so a costed prevention portfolio cannot be derived from published sources. The statutory hook does exist: the Community Safety and Well-Being Plan's 2026 update, where any prevention promise would have to live. A promise that names a program model, annual dollars, neighbourhoods, and a check-back year is checkable. "More community programs" is not. CSWB 2026 Update (eSCRIBE PDF) ↗

■ CITY DECIDESAlmost entirely council's own jurisdiction: recreation, neighbourhood services, lighting, and grants are ordinary council votes. The province holds the school and health levers; the evidence-based youth models are city-fundable. This is the one option space fully inside council's power.

Surveillance technology

Cameras and sensors: expanding the downtown CCTV program, automatic licence-plate readers (ALPR), drones, body-worn cameras, and the facial-recognition question underneath all of them. Much of this list already exists; candidates often propose what is already running.

□ SHARED — CITY + PROVINCE

THE EVIDENCE, THE COSTS, WHO DECIDES▾

EVIDENCE FOR

The 40-year evidence on CCTV is specific: a systematic review of 80 evaluations found about a 13% overall crime reduction, strongest in parking areas and property crime, and only for actively monitored systems. Passive camera systems showed no significant effect. systematic review ↗
Plate readers are already in use with a clear operational case: London police describe cruiser-mounted scanning for stolen plates and vehicles and suspended drivers, run under a privacy impact assessment and provincial privacy-commissioner guidelines. LPS ALPR page ↗
Body-worn cameras began rolling out in January 2025, with a target of all frontline officers around the start of 2026. No completion confirmation had been published as of July 2026. LPS body-worn cameras page ↗

EVIDENCE AGAINST / LIMITS

The same CCTV review found weak effects on violent street crime, the setting where London's safety debate actually lives, and no verified evidence exists that cameras improve the feeling of safety. systematic review ↗
Canada's privacy regulators, on police facial recognition, in their own words: the "current legislative context for police use of FR is insufficient," facial data "speaks to the very core of individual identity," and their guidance "should not be read as justifying, endorsing or approving the use of FR." Privacy Commissioner of Canada ↗
London has a facial-recognition history voters may hear about: in 2020 the police service initially denied, then confirmed, that officers had accessed the Clearview AI tool; a review found seven officers had used free trial accounts, one in an investigation. No facial-recognition program currently exists. CBC ↗
Nobody publishes the current downtown camera count or operating cost; the last public anchors are 2018's 17 cameras at about $70,000 a year. That is an accountability gap in itself. Global News ↗

WHAT IT COST ELSEWHERE

The 2024 CCTV expansion drew a $255,000 provincial grant share; the 2018 anchor works out to about $4,000 per camera per year in operating cost. MPP release ↗

AT LONDON'S SCALE — NOT DERIVABLE FROM PUBLIC DATA

The current system's cost is not derivable: the post-expansion camera count and operating cost are unpublished. A doubling of the 2018-era system would plausibly run low six figures a year in operating money, but the honest label is unknown. A candidate promising "more cameras" should also say which system they mean: the city's downtown CCTV is council's money, while police technology sits inside the police budget total that council cannot line-item. Global News ↗

□ SHARED — CITY + PROVINCESplit three ways: council owns the downtown CCTV budget; the board and chief own police technology inside the budget total; federal and provincial privacy law constrains all of it.

A recovery-first drug response

Organize the drug response around treatment: detox and treatment beds, rapid access to opioid-agonist medication, recovery-oriented housing, with harm-reduction services de-emphasized or excluded. Alberta is the reference model; Ontario's HART hubs are the version London actually has. This option and the next are mirror images, held to identical rigor.

□ PROVINCE DECIDES

THE EVIDENCE, THE COSTS, WHO DECIDES▾

EVIDENCE FOR

Treatment demand demonstrably exceeds supply: London's first 33 hub beds filled immediately, and a year into the provincial rollout, reporting found demand far exceeding capacity, with many hubs only partially operational. Whatever else is true, the beds get used. Canadian Affairs ↗
Rapid access to medication has real published outcomes: Alberta's virtual opioid-dependency program took the median wait for opioid-agonist treatment from six days to zero, with 90% retention at six months among ongoing-care clients, in a chart-review study without a control group. Opioid-agonist treatment (medication such as methadone or buprenorphine that replaces street opioids) carries the strongest mortality evidence in the whole field. Addiction Science & Clinical Practice ↗
Alberta's 2024 result was real: opioid deaths fell about 37% in 2024 from the 2023 record. CBC ↗
Alberta also eliminated the former $40-a-day client fee for publicly funded live-in treatment and reports more than 10,000 added treatment spaces. The capacity claims are the province's own accounting of its model. Government of Alberta ↗
Even operators on the harm-reduction side concede the premise that consumption services without treatment capacity leave people cycling. A Hamilton hub operator's on-record verdict: "Both programs are needed." Canadian Affairs ↗

EVIDENCE AGAINST / LIMITS

The 2025 data undercut the strong causal claim. National opioid deaths fell 23% in 2025, Ontario's fell 38% and British Columbia's 22% on the federal series, but Alberta's fell only 4%, with Alberta's overdose EMS responses up sharply. Deaths fell across jurisdictions with opposite drug policies, and researchers point to changes in the illegal supply itself as a major confounder. CBC ↗
Leaving treatment is the highest-risk moment. In a British study of consecutive detox patients, the overdose deaths in the following year occurred among those who successfully completed detox, having lost tolerance; none among non-completers. BMJ ↗
A meta-analysis of more than 138,000 patients found all-cause death rates roughly three times higher out of methadone treatment than in it, with risk spiking immediately after leaving. Any recovery-first design is accountable for what happens at discharge. BMJ meta-analysis ↗
The involuntary-treatment extension has weak-to-negative evidence: the systematic review of compulsory treatment found the evidence "does not, on the whole, suggest improved outcomes," with some studies suggesting potential harms. A candidate pointing at Alberta's coming involuntary layer owes voters this literature. Int. Journal of Drug Policy ↗
No outcome accountability exists yet on either front: Alberta has published no facility-level completion or relapse outcomes, and Ontario has published no intake or outcome numbers for London's hub. The hub design also bans consumption services and needle exchange on site, and, per reporting, drug checking. London's March 2026 mass-overdose event (roughly 39 to 40 calls in 24 hours) was identified through the now-closed consumption site's drug-checking capability. Pairing those two facts is this page's analysis, not a cited finding. CBC ↗

WHAT IT COST ELSEWHERE

Alberta's Lethbridge recovery community: $19 million capital for 50 beds ($380,000 a bed) and $3.4 million a year operating, about $68,000 per bed per year. Global News ↗
London's hub: $6.3 million a year across roughly 59 funded beds works out near $107,000 per bed per year, overstated as a bed cost because the money also buys wraparound services. CBC ↗

AT LONDON'S SCALE — ARITHMETIC SHOWN

The size of London's treatment shortfall cannot be stated, because neither local bed counts nor wait times are published; that absence is itself the first question for candidates. Scale anchor: 100 treatment beds at the Alberta operating rate is about $6.8 million a year plus roughly $38 million capital, and none of it is council money. Health care is provincial. Council can vote land, zoning, siting support, and advocacy; a recovery-first council candidate is mostly promising to ask the province, and the costed question is what they do while waiting. Global News ↗

□ PROVINCE DECIDESThe province, overwhelmingly: treatment beds, hub funding, and withdrawal management are Ministry of Health money, and Ottawa sets the federal funding streams. Council's levers are siting, land, small grants, and advocacy.

A harm-reduction drug response

Organize the drug response around keeping people alive and connected while they use: supervised consumption, naloxone distribution, needle and syringe programs, drug checking, and, at the contested outer edge, prescribed safer supply, with treatment offered but not required. Since June 13, 2026, no supervised consumption service operates in London. This option and the previous one are mirror images, held to identical rigor.

□ SHARED — CITY + FEDS

THE EVIDENCE, THE COSTS, WHO DECIDES▾

EVIDENCE FOR

The strongest specific outcome in the whole drug section: across Canada's federally exempted consumption sites, zero fatal overdoses have ever occurred on-site, against 41,538 overdoses managed by staff. Even the critique literature does not dispute on-site reversals. Health Canada surveillance ↗
Near-site mortality studies point the same way: fatal overdoses within 500 metres of Vancouver's Insite fell 35% after it opened, versus 9% citywide. The Lancet ↗
Toronto neighbourhoods with sites saw overdose mortality fall from 8.10 to 2.70 per 100,000 after 2017, with no decline elsewhere, in an ecological study design that cannot prove causation. The Lancet Public Health ↗
The uncontested baseline layer: take-home naloxone reduces overdose deaths among participants and communities, and needle and syringe programs cut HIV transmission by roughly a third to a half, per systematic reviews. A US systematic review of consumption sites found they may reduce overdose deaths and improve access to care "while not increasing crime or public nuisance." Addiction (systematic review) ↗
London's own safer-supply program, Canada's first, has a peer-reviewed cohort study: after entry, clients' emergency visits fell (rate ratio 0.69), hospital admissions fell (0.46), and health-care costs dropped from $15,635 to $7,310 per person-year, with no change in the comparison group. The authors call it preliminary evidence. CMAJ cohort study ↗

EVIDENCE AGAINST / LIMITS

Said straight: the population-level mortality evidence is weaker than advocates imply. A 2025 federal systematic review of Canadian studies found province-wide analyses generally showed no significant association between consumption sites and population-level overdose deaths; smaller-area protection appeared in some studies but not consistently. The strong claim is lives saved on-site and near-site, not city-wide death curves. PHAC systematic review ↗
Coverage is one reason: in British Columbia's 2025 data, 48% of deaths were in private residences and 20% outdoors, places sites do not reach. BC Coroners Service release ↗
The disorder critique has real data behind it, and the block-level literature is genuinely mixed: the best recent study, on Toronto police data, found break-and-enters within 400 metres jumped 49.9% when sites were implemented and then declined on trend, alongside declining robberies and vehicle thefts. Read it beside the US review's no-increase finding; both are in print. interrupted time-series study ↗
Ontario's own commissioned review of a Toronto site is more nuanced than either camp quotes it: it found the site "suitable to maintain funding" while documenting real operational failures, including untrained security and weak community responsiveness. The province proceeded with closures anyway. Both halves belong in print. Ontario ministry review (PDF) ↗
Safer-supply diversion is a live, documented dispute with a London face on each side: a London physician's on-record clinical observations describe a collapsed street price for hydromorphone and harms concentrated in Old East Village, while the peer-reviewed London cohort study measures different outcomes (health use and costs). Both can be true at once; a candidate quoting one owes voters the other. Canadian Affairs ↗
The federal funding stream for prescribed alternatives ended in March 2025, and Health Canada says it has no plans to resume it. The operational status of London's safer-supply program as of July 2026 could not be confirmed. CBC ↗

WHAT IT COST ELSEWHERE

Ontario's best public per-site anchor: $1.35 million a year for Peterborough's consumption and treatment site. The province's own comparison is that HART hubs get up to four times more funding than sites did. Global News ↗
The bare-bones precedent: Toronto's Kensington Market overdose-prevention site runs donor-funded on about $30,000 a month, roughly $360,000 a year, with no provincial money. CBC ↗

AT LONDON'S SCALE — ARITHMETIC SHOWN

The money is small: a bare-bones overdose-prevention site would run on the order of $0.4 to 1.4 million a year, a rounding error against the $151.7-million police net budget. The law is the constraint. Under Ontario's 2024 Act: no site within 200 metres of schools or child care; municipalities cannot apply for federal drug-decriminalization exemptions; and without the provincial minister's approval, a municipality cannot apply for or renew a federal consumption-site exemption, or even support anyone else's application by by-law or resolution. What the Act might still leave a council free to fund is a legal question this page does not answer (see the appendix below). A Charter challenge is pending with no final ruling as of research; the injunction in that case never obliged funding, which is what actually closed Carepoint. Community Care and Recovery Act, 2024 ↗

□ SHARED — CITY + FEDSOttawa grants consumption-site exemptions and sets federal funding; the province gates municipal action under its 2024 Act and controls health funding; council can plainly fund outreach and advocacy. If the pending court ruling lands before October 26, this box may need rewriting.

Enforcement-led public order

Use police enforcement, provincial offences, and by-law tools against open drug use, encampments, and street disorder: the restore-order-first option. The legal architecture matters more here than anywhere, because the sharpest tools belong to other governments.

□ SHARED — CITY + PROVINCE

THE EVIDENCE, THE COSTS, WHO DECIDES▾

EVIDENCE FOR

Disorder policing can reduce crime, done a specific way: a 30-test meta-analysis, rated Effective by the US evidence registry, found modest but significant overall effects, including on violent and drug offences. NIJ CrimeSolutions ↗
The province has built the tool candidates will invoke: the Safer Municipalities Act, 2025 creates a provincial offence for public consumption of illegal substances, with powers to direct a person to stop or leave. Legislative Assembly of Ontario ↗
Local appetite is on the record: London's mayor applauded the planned provincial crackdown legislation and urged Londoners to "be very open to this," though he did not join the 13 mayors who urged use of the notwithstanding clause; three London councillors opposed invoking it. CBC ↗

EVIDENCE AGAINST / LIMITS

The same meta-analysis, same page: community- and problem-oriented approaches "are more effective for reducing crime than order-maintenance approaches that rely primarily on aggressive enforcement of minor offenses," which on their own show no significant crime reduction. One source; both sides must quote it whole. NIJ CrimeSolutions ↗
Simple drug possession is federal law, and federal prosecution policy diverts it: prosecutors are directed to reserve prosecution "for the most serious manifestations of the offence." That is why London's open-drug unit produced 1,851 seizures and only 75 charges in ten months. No council vote can touch this. PPSC Deskbook ↗
Displacement has a modeled body count: a 23-city simulation estimated that continual involuntary displacement of homeless people who inject drugs would produce 974 to 2,175 additional overdose deaths per 10,000 people over ten years, plus thousands fewer treatment starts. A modeling study, not a trial; projections depend on assumptions. JAMA study ↗
The Charter sets a floor: an Ontario court held that evicting an encampment when a region lacks enough accessible shelter space violates section 7. The new provincial law does not repeal the Charter. legal clinic summary ↗
London's bed arithmetic makes that floor bind: the city has 396 emergency shelter beds and they run consistently full, so large-scale clearance runs into the same wall regardless of the new offence. CBC ↗
Civil-liberties critics document warrantless removal powers from encampments on suspicion of substance use, and fines up to $10,000 or up to six months, in the new Act. CCLA ↗
London's own enforcement experiment is producing referral, not treatment: 18% of the open-drug unit's 1,406 referrals to services were accepted. Enforcement advocates read that as proof outreach alone fails; critics read it as proof enforcement does not create treatment demand. The number is printed; candidates can explain it. CBC ↗

WHAT IT COST ELSEWHERE

London's open-air drug unit runs about 30 officers; at the base-salary floor that is roughly $3.6 million a year of officer time. A redeployment cost rather than new money, since council cannot direct deployment anyway. CBC ↗

AT LONDON'S SCALE — NOT DERIVABLE FROM PUBLIC DATA

Encampment-clearance costs are not derivable: no London figure is published, and the binding constraint is shelter beds, not dollars. The narrowest levers here belong to the governments whose candidates talk about them most: the province wrote the public-consumption offence, the chief sets enforcement priorities, and the federal Crown controls possession prosecution. Council holds the encampment protocol and the official community-safety strategy. CBC ↗

□ SHARED — CITY + PROVINCEThe province wrote the new public-order offence; the chief decides enforcement priorities; the federal Crown controls possession prosecution; council holds the encampment protocol, by-law standards, and the community-safety plan.

Who runs the police: the board question

Not an intervention; the machinery underneath all of them. The police board, not council, sets police policy and budget estimates and hires the chief. Voters electing a council on October 26 are indirectly electing four of the board's seven seats: the three council seats, all held by members up for re-election, plus the council-appointed community seat.

□ SHARED — CITY + PROVINCE

THE EVIDENCE, THE COSTS, WHO DECIDES▾

EVIDENCE FOR

Every police option above runs through board-and-chief discretion, not council votes. The appointment power is council's most concrete police decision of the term, and CBC notes the board may have new vacancies to fill after the October election. The next multi-year police budget (2028 to 2031) will be negotiated by the board and council chosen October 26. CBC ↗
A board can be pushed: Peterborough's 2025 negotiation produced a 7.8% increase instead of 8.8%, with the chief now presenting bronze, silver, and gold budget options, bronze being the legal minimum. Open Council ↗

EVIDENCE AGAINST / LIMITS

The board itself cannot direct operations; the chief runs deployment by statute. And provincial appointees hold three of the seven seats regardless of how London votes. Open Council ↗
The current board has on-the-record friction: the provincial civilian police commission issued a formal caution to board member Coun. Susan Stevenson in July 2024, citing "denigrating use of language" in social-media posts about homeless Londoners and noting that the code of conduct "requires a higher standard for members of a police services board," while declining a full investigation. CBC ↗
Board composition is a live, sourced critique: all seven current members are white; Black community leaders have asked for outreach on vacancies, and a 2022 request that the province appoint an Indigenous member went unmet. No published evaluation links Ontario board composition to policing outcomes; the governance option's evidence base is thin by construction. CBC ↗

AT LONDON'S SCALE — ARITHMETIC SHOWN

The arithmetic here is seats, not dollars: four of seven board seats trace to the council elected October 26 (three sitting members, currently the mayor and two councillors, plus one council-appointed community member); the province appoints the other three no matter how London votes. One structural wrinkle carried from the Taxes File: council members who sit on the board also vote on the police budget total at council. CBC ↗

□ SHARED — CITY + PROVINCECouncil: its four seats, the budget total, advocacy. The province: three seats, the statute, and the arbitration commission. The board: the chief and policy. The chief: operations.

The Safety & Policing File

The honest numbers

The two crime lines

The police budget in context

Response times: the claim and the numbers

What council can and cannot do

The drug crisis in numbers

What London already runs

The option space

More sworn officers

Co-response and civilian crisis teams

Prevention and upstream spending

Surveillance technology

A recovery-first drug response

A harm-reduction drug response

Enforcement-led public order

Who runs the police: the board question

The drug-death numbers, before you quote either camp

What a costed answer looks like

What your ward is wrestling with