Caledon Street homicide ramps up police overtime costs for January

An investigation into the city’s first homicide of 2020 is partially responsible for ramping up overtime costs for the Sault Ste. Marie Police Service. 

A total of $139,878 was spent on staff overtime in January of this year, compared to $61,618 in overtime costs in January 2019, which city police attribute to the investigation into the death of 44-year-old John David Jamieson, who was found by police in a church parking lot on Caledon Street Jan. 9 after sustaining a single gunshot wound. 

“That big blip there, folks, was just pure operational - and you know, homicides are extremely expensive,” Sault Ste. Marie Police Services Chief Hugh Stevenson told board members during last week’s Police Services Board meeting. 

Another investigation into an attempted homicide - a home invasion where a man was allegedly beaten - also contributed to the uptick in overtime costs when compared to the previous year. 

“But between the two of those investigations, we accounted for over 80 charges - so that was a lot of work,” Stevenson said. 

January’s overtime costs are the highest since city police shelled out $132,988 in July 2017. 

New bomb suit to be funded by capital reserves  

City police has been given the go-ahead by the police board to pull $54,821 from its capital reserves in order to replace its aging bomb suit, instead of leasing it over a period of three years as previously agreed upon. 

The company providing the new EOD-10 explosive disposal bomb suit has come back to the police service and informed it that it will have to buy the bomb suit outright. 

The force’s current bomb suit - which Stevenson says is used about 17-20 times a year by the police service - is now 17 years old, which has prompted health and safety concerns in the past. 

“You may wonder, ‘is it that often in this city?’ and it’s old dynamite, suspicious packages, old military ordnance,” Stevenson told members of the Police Services Board Thursday. 

Before the outright purchase of the new bomb suit was approved by police board members, the capital reserve fund was at about $90,000. 

Stevenson expects the suit will arrive in a couple of months. 

Reported property, violent crimes see slight decrease in 2019  

Year-to-date numbers for the period of January to December in 2019 suggest that property crimes and crimes of violence reported to police are down slightly when compared to the same period in 2018. 

Numbers compiled by city police show an 8.4 per cent decrease in break-and-enters, and a 18.3 per cent drop in thefts, which include incidents of shoplifting, theft from motor vehicles, mischief and fraud. 

In 2019, there were 2,439 motor vehicle collisions reported to police, up 18.8 per cent from 2018. 

Impaired driving incidents also saw a 24.3 per cent spike in 2019.