OPP detachement in Fort Frances. Image: Randy Thoms/Acadia Broadcasting

OPP are explaining policing costs in Fort Frances.

The town is projected to pay $2.6 million for policing in 2024.

That is a slight decrease from the amount estimated for 2023.

Sergeant Rob Griffin with the OPP’s Municipal Policing Bureau says everything an officer does is tracked for billing purposes.

“We have a system called, we refer to it as DAR, which is a daily activity report, which tracks an officer’s activity. It makes it possible for us to know what we’re billing for and what we’re not billing for. So, in a daily activity report, it would have everything that the officer did in a day, whether it be answering a call for service, doing provincial activity, or doing reports of the station,” says Griffin.

OPP attribute a base rate charge per property that is the same for all municipalities served by the provincial service.

Calls for service also play a factor.

“The calls for service cost is the proportional amount of the calls for service generated for municipal policing in the province. It’s just under 1% of the total cost for the province for the calls for service is attributed to those reactive calls for service in Fort Frances,” says Simon Looker with the OPP’s Municipal Policing Bureau.

Calls for service also fall within one of nine categories.

Operational calls account for a majority of the officers’ time in Fort Frances.

“That’s completely normal. What operations mean is it’s calls that we respond to as police officers that are most common. Something like a dispute, we would go, and it’d be non-criminal, it would be dealt with very quickly, and we’d move on,” says Griffin.

Overtime and costs related to court security, prisoner transportation and certain detachment costs are also factored into the final bill.

For 2023, Fort Frances has the second highest per property charge at $639, $160 less than Kenora.