It’s become an increasing sight in Winnipeg: big-box stores, churches and mosques are forced to pay special duty police officers overtime to direct long lines of traffic.
At Oasis Church near Elmhurst Road and Wilkes Avenue, police are regularly hired to direct traffic for Sunday services, at a cost of $134.40 to $158.55 per hour, depending on the type of officer. It must be paid in advance.
Area councillor Evan Duncan (Charleswood-Tuxedo-Westwood) said police were hired by the church after local residents complained about the volume of traffic. He called the intersection “problematic” and unsafe.
SHANNON VANRAES / FREE PRESS FILES
Members of the Winnipeg Police Service direct traffic in front of the St. James’s Costco store. After the acting chief of police recently said the city needs to hire 78 more officers to respond to increasing calls for service — some city officials are questioning if the use of special off-duty officers is appropriate.
A city report this month recommended lowering the speed limit in the area, but stopped short of calling for a traffic light to be installed at the intersection.
As the Winnipeg Police Board continues to draw attention to the growing demands placed on the police service — the acting chief recently said the city needs to hire 78 more officers to respond to increasing calls for service — Duncan wonders if the reliance on special duty officers is a valuable way to spend finite police resources.
“I applaud (Oasis) for (paying) because that’s a huge expense that they’re incurring. But… it’s taking away resources potentially from other areas that could be using them,” he said.
“There’s only so much overtime that you can do until you’re burned out.”
A city study has suggested it would cost $2.5 million to upgrade the intersection and install a traffic light.
The report noted there were 89 collisions at the intersection from 2015 to 2022. Oasis Church did not respond to a request for comment.
Winnipeg Police Service Supt. Dave Dalal said the demand for special duty officers, be it to direct traffic, keep the peace at events or catch shoplifters, is increasing, and the service “continually needs to re-assess whether we can meet that demand.”
He said the issue doesn’t relate to the police board’s call for more officers, as police aren’t asked to leave the line of duty to do such jobs, and they’re scheduled on a volunteer basis around work hours.
“It’s really two different things — the 78 officers (suggestion) has to do with responding to citizen demand that’s already coming in, special duty is more of a proactive presence,” he said Tuesday.
Winnipeg Police Association president Cory Wiles agreed.
“The unfortunate reality is that changes to special duty will not address the gap between the demands on the WPS and the resources that are available,” he said in an email.
Right now, there’s an especially high demand for officers in the retail sector, Dalal said, and the WPS has had to tighten rules related to which stores can hire special duty officers.
“We want to ensure that the stores that are hiring us actually have loss-prevention officers… it’s important to ensure that officers aren’t acting as security guards,” he said.
Dalal said the WPS will keep track of monthly overtime reported by officers to mitigate burnout and won’t allow officers to take on overtime if they struggle while on duty.
Any investment from the city that would result in less of a need for special duty officers would be positive, he said.
“We are always supportive of partners coming up with solutions that don’t require human staffing, specifically police,” he said. “We are busy every day, and if there are infrastructure solutions that will address the problem, we’re certainly supportive of that.”
This summer, Costco paid for a traffic light at its St. James Street warehouse after a city report found the level of traffic met the need to add a light in the busy area. The estimated capital cost was $250,000, and the city will cover the estimated $5,000 in annual maintenance and operating costs.
Coun. Janice Lukes, chair of the city’s public works committee, has watched traffic around the Manitoba Islamic Association’s Grand Mosque at 2445 Waverley St., which is in her ward, explode in recent years and affect traffic during prayer services on Fridays.
She said the mosque’s leadership has raised the idea of installing traffic lights, but she noted that, like Oasis Church, the jump in traffic is only once a week, on Fridays.
“I don’t think special infrastructure is warranted for three hours a day, one day a week,” she said. “That’s the challenge, the short window of time where there’s high intensity.”
She suggested that installing infrastructure because of short-term spikes in traffic could be dangerous, noting that several intersections in her ward have stop signs that were installed in hopes of calming traffic, but drivers regularly drive through them because the area is usually quiet.
“It’s not a funds issue at all, because it could be more dangerous if pieces of infrastructure put in that don’t meet the criteria,” she said.
“Maybe they meet the criteria on that one day at that time frame, but it can be more dangerous.”
— with files from Joyanne Pursaga
malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca
Malak Abas
Reporter
Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.
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