As we look forward to 2021, NewmarketToday has reached out to local leaders for their perspectives on what the new year may hold for Newmarket and York Region communities.
2021 will be Jim MacSween's first full year as chief of York Regional Police, after assuming the post last May when the COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing.
MacSween said he has many priorities for the force and community safety this year, but the pandemic remains top of mind.
Getting his officers vaccinated so they can be protected from the virus while out in the community performing their duties is one of his top priorities.
"We are currently working with the region and public health to facilitate the implementation of a vaccine program at our organization, no different than EMS, fire and everywhere else in the region," said the chief.
"Hopefully, within the first quarter of the year, we will have a program here that will allow all members to be vaccinated. That way we can continue to move along and manage our way out of the pandemic. But it will take some time."
From a public safety perspective, York Regional Police will be giving special focus to the problems of organized crime and guns after seeing some troubling trends on those issues.
MacSween said he is particularly concerned by the increase in the number of guns, particularly handguns, that officers are encountering on the frontlines. More guns have been discovered and seized during routine police work, such as traffic stops.
"That's troubling to me because it means that there is more prevalence of handguns in the community," said MacSween.
"We are pushing really hard in the area of organized crime because I can tell you that gun crime and drug crime have been increasing ... The crime severity index has continuously gone up for the past five years, and those numbers are tied to that. So we want to get ahead of that trend and push hard on organized crime."
Inside the police department, MacSween there are several initiatives underway this year to address different issues.
The police are continuing to refine their mental health diversion unit, which began during the early days of the pandemic, and has significantly decreased the number of cases where armed police have had to respond to a call about someone in mental health distress.
In addition to the mental health workers who have been taking low-priority calls to divert the issue to the appropriate mental health service provider, in November, a crisis worker was added to the team.
"We saw some real success with that. The mental health workers and the crisis worker, in a short amount of time, were able to resolve 70 per cent of those calls over the phone. We believe that is the way forward," said the chief.
MacSween said the force is also trying to find ways to address some of the grievances about modern policing that contributed to 2020's Black Lives Matter protests after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis shortly after MacSween became chief.
"The very first thing I did was reach out to all of our partner community organizations, telling them they had my support as the chief of police to peacefully protest, and asked them to help figure out what the way forward is. How can we make sure the ugly manifestation that happened in the U.S. never happens in York Region," he said.
"We are in the process with all of those communities to create a working group and community roundtable that will work with us and provide us with information to allow us to better engage with the community.
"The true value of listening to your community in areas like this is to understand access to the lived experience of people. When you truly listen, that information is invaluable to us as a police service because it allows us to look within ourselves as an organization and find areas in the system that are not equitable and make people feel that we are not an inclusive organization — because we are. "
Other projects underway include a new strategy aimed at creating a more holistic approach to maintaining officer well-being, which was designed by a psychologist the department hired for the task.
New emphasis is being placed on professional development, gender issues, modernizing communications and looking for operational efficiencies. That latter effort, said MacSween, has managed to find $1 million in staff time savings.
