Hamilton asks province to come up with $1M for Tasers

City councillors are balking at the idea of paying nearly $1 million for more Tasers for Hamilton police, asking the province to pay for theminstead.

Councillors voted down a request from Chief Glenn De Caire at Wednesdays general issues committee for $992,462 to purchase more Tasers and train 519 front-line Hamilton police officers to use them.

Instead, the city will ask the province to pay for all of it, since it was the province that released relaxed regulations regarding Taser usage earlier this year.

If we dont get the money, its not a go because we just dont have it ourselves.- Coun. Lloyd Ferguson

We need to just stop this right now until we go to the province and say, This is your initiative. We need your money. If we dont get the money, its not a go because we just dont have it ourselves, said Coun. Lloyd Ferguson of Ancaster.

Its important that we dont kid ourselves. We dont have a million dollars.

Hamilton Police Service has been using conductive energy weapons (CEWs), otherwise known as Tasers, since 2004.

Hamilton police has trained 236 front-line officers. The serviceproposes spending $992,462 to train more, as well as purchase 150 more CEWs to add to the arsenal of 66. Itwill also cost $635,443 per year to maintain the program. This includes $226,449 for two full-time training officers and about $100,000 for cartridges.

In addition to the money, De Caire asked councillors to do public consultation in their wards to gauge public opinion. Coun. Brad Clark said this was an odd move.

Consulting for police?

How can we conduct public consultation on a tool weve never used, never purchased, seen no ministry guidelines onweve seen nothing, he said.

For the first time in the history of the city were being asked to do consultation on behalf of the police department.

If the police service wanted, said city solicitor Janice Atwood-Petkovski, it could simply add the expanded program to its budget next year. Council approves the police budget as a whole but can't dissect it item by item.

But the service wants council's input, and for councillors to do public consultation "as representatives of the people," Deputy Chief Ken Leenderstesaid.

In the end, the committee decision did not address the matter of public consultation.

The budget estimates are based on standards the province hasn't formally released yet,Leenderste said. Hamilton police estimate, based on recommendations from a provincialCEW advisory board, that Ontario will recommend that an officer new to Tasers receive 12 hours of training.

Tasers were involved in 49 incidents in Hamilton in 2012, up from 22 the year before. Of those incidents, 17 involved people described as emotionally disturbed/mentally ill by police.