Crossing guard shortage pulling police officers off regular duty

A crossing guard shortage at schools and other locations across the city is taking police officers off the streets and in turn, costing tax payers thousands of dollars.

CityNews has learned, on Thursday alone, at least 50 Toronto Police officers were pulled off their regular duties to cover for vacant crossing guards.

Each time there’s a vacant post or a crossing guard calls in sick, an officer is called in to cover it off. The base salary for a Toronto crossing guard is $11.90/hour while the average hourly base salary of a Toronto Police officer is around $40/hour.

On top of the hiring crunch, police also have to back fill sick calls daily.

If 50 officers are pulled off duty to cover for crossing guards every school day this year, that would add up to nearly 10,000 officers. That would be ten times the recorded amount last year. The potential cost to residents would be a staggering $1.2-million to have officers walk our kids across the street.

It’s a number Toronto Police spokesperson Meaghan Gray says is “not sustainable.”

Toronto Police have been in charge of the city’s crossing guards since 1947. The Police Service is one of the last in the entire country to still be running a crossing guard program.

Gray says the cost to run the crossing guard program currently eats up $7-million of the police budget. Toronto Police are taking a proposal to City Council with the hopes that the crossing guard program would be “someone else’s responsibility” as of September 2017.

“Officers are very busy on a day-to-day basis responding to calls and doing proactive policing,” explained Gray. “As part of the transformational task force (Toronto Police) are taking a look at, are we in the places we need to be and crossing guards may not be one of those places.”

Mayor John Tory said, as much as we want to make sure people are safe, using highly trained Toronto Police officers on things like crossing guards is not the best use of their time.

“We should have it handled by competent people but not Toronto Police officers.”

Toronto Police wouldn’t confirm how many crossing guards they’re currently short but they are asking anyone interested to call their local police division.