Dr. Paul Seccaspina presents the numbers from a recent Oracle poll on Police Satisfaction in the North Bay-Callander area. PHOTO BY CHRIS DAWSON.
Police Chief Paul Cook is impressed.
North Bay’s Top Cop sat in with the North Bay Police Board to view the findings of a Policing Satisfaction Phone Survey which was conducted by Oracle from June 18th to 23rd.
Oracle’s Dr. Paul Seccaspina made the presentation Wednesday morning.
The 400 person local survey in Callander and North Bay compared the recent statistics with those done in a similar poll back in 2013.
“I’ve seen a lot of similarities, we’ve seen drugs still being the number one concern in both communities, impaired driving as well,” said Dr. Seccaspina.
“We’ve also seen that the police service is still rating high across most levels.”
Cook believes the statistics show the police service is moving in the right direction.
“It tells us the citizens of North Bay and Callander have a lot of confidence in our service and also provides us with some indications as to where they would like to see their tax dollars spent, specific to policing with the number one concern in Callander in North Bay being drugs,” he said.
Dr. Seccaspina says Oracle has been doing Police Service polls across Ontario since the early 2000’s and they have conducted a dozen similar police services surveys in the past six months.
“The North Bay numbers are a lot more positive, when you look at some of the border communities and other places in southern Ontario, there are bigger concerns around taxes and the perception of it, depending on the community,” said Seccaspina.
“Some communities are still more under the gun, some communities there is more of a perception of that issue on trust and not much so in North Bay and Callander.”
Other highlights included 64% surveyed support a tax increase if it means hiring more police officers.
“It makes it very clear that people are willing to pay increased taxes if they see it going to good use so they made it very clear that they’d be willing to pay additional taxes to maintain or enhance the level of service that we currently provide,” said Cook.
The service will continue to try and gather information from the community which will include Youth in Policing Initiative Students doing community satisfaction surveys at police headquarters plus a few town hall meetings will be held in Callander and North Bay relating to policing priorities.
All the information gathered is important as the Police Board plans for the future.
“It’s critical, our strategic plan, which is a 5-year plan which provides a road map for our police service and it assists us in setting up our policing priorities, expires at the end of this year so we have a strategic planning committee internal committee but during the course of the planning process we want to reach out to the community as much as possible and get their feedback and hear from them whether they want their tax dollars spent specific to policing,” said Cook.
