Sault Ste. Marie Police Service will not quite realize its goal of establishing a unit dedicated to keeping tabs on people who have been released on bail.
The police service will receive $100,000 a year over the next four years — essentially enough to bankroll one full-time officer that will be used to enforce bail conditions — from the Ministry of the Solicitor General through its $24-million Bail Compliance and Warrant Apprehension grant program.
The funding is intended to help police services in Ontario establish dedicated bail compliance and warrant apprehension teams to monitor high-risk individuals, and to support new technology for a province-wide bail compliance monitoring system.
But the money that will be provided to Sault Police is only a quarter of what it had asked for in its application to the ministry: The initial pitch was for $400,000 per year over three years to establish a bail compliance unit in the Sault with two full-time officers and up to two support staff.
Sault Ste. Marie Police Service Chief Hugh Stevenson told reporters covering the police services board meeting Thursday that the additional money from the province will help his officers “proactively look into any bail releases in this city to make sure they’re following the rules that were addressed to them by the court.”
“Most officers will know conditions of bail in the community and we’ll always be acting on that,” Stevenson said. "So it’s not like we didn’t do it before, this is just more proactive — and we appreciate the Ontario Government’s push to ensure that bail is taken seriously in our communities.”
People released on bail are generally released on recognizance with conditions, which could include a stay-at-home order, an order to stay with a surety or a curfew.
There were 583 bail violations recorded by Sault Ste. Marie Police Service between January and November of last year, prompting concerns from the police chief about the number of people that are being released on bail in the city.
Stevenson says there have even been instances where people out on bail have had up to 28 charges related to property offences.
“That’s very difficult for a community — and a police service — to understand that when you’ve done it that many times in a small, temporal time period that someone shouldn’t be held,” he said.
But for now, Sault Police will take what it’s been given by the ministry and “make that work operationally,” Stevenson told reporters.
“Our job is to make sure with this additional money that people are following the rules as set by the courts,” he said.
The grant money provided through the Bail Compliance and Warrant Apprehension grant program is anticipated to flow into the police service as early as March.