South Simcoe Police Service Chief Andrew Fletcher provided the Bradford West Gwillimbury/Innisfil Police Services Board with an update on police service grants at its recent meeting.
“We did receive notification from the ministry that we received our 2021 Court Security and Prisoner Transportation grant,” said Fletcher. “That one always follows after the budget. We received $226,358. That’s good news for the budget, particularly because we didn’t budget anything because we didn’t know this year whether we were going to receive any funds or not.”
The Court Security and Prisoner Transportation grant funds up to $125 million a year for municipal governments to offset costs associated with providing security to provincial courthouses and transporting prisoners to and from those facilities.
The South Simcoe Police Service also received the Community Safety and Policing grant, which is made up of local and provincial streams.
“In the last round, we applied for both and received the provincial stream right away for two years and, this time around, we received grant funding for three years (for the local stream),” said Fletcher. “The good news is we did receive the Community Safety and Policing grant local stream for $299,781 every year for three years. That’s up a little bit from previous years. That money goes towards our COAST (Crisis Outreach and Support Team) officer and two of our CMEU (Community Mobilization Engagement Unit) officers.”
CMEU focuses on community safety and well-being to prevent crime by enhancing community relationships. COAST falls under the CMEU umbrella and is a program focused on working with local mental health partner agencies to respond to mental health and crisis calls for service.
Also successful with applying for the provincial stream of the Community Safety and Policing grant, the South Simcoe Police Service received the grant for all three years.
“The provincial stream is specifically targeted around human trafficking, gangs, and guns,” said Fletcher. “They have very specific criteria, and you have to be working with partner agencies. We received $151,723 for the first year, $154,488 for the second year, and $153,667 in the third year. That allows us to have one full-time human trafficking investigator in our unit, and also allows us to have a 14-week summer student come in as a crime analyst to help augment some of the work they do. It also allows us to send our members on specialized training for sex assault and trafficking.”
The board was thankful for the South Simcoe Police Service’s efforts in writing the grants to ensure they have the resources to continue to do proactive work in the area.
“It takes a lot of work to write those grant applications, so thanks, chief,” said Bradford West Gwillimbury Mayor Rob Keffer.
