With the Victoria Police Department spending $141,000 in overtime to guard the launch of the Olympic torch relay in the provincial capital last October, how much overtime pay will Vancouver police rack up during the 2010 Games? Olympic critic Chris Shaw wants to know, but says he hasn’t been able to pry numbers out of the Vancouver Police Department, even through a freedom-of- information request.“I tried,” Shaw told the Straight. “They’ve completely hidden all their costs.”
The UBC neuroscience professor said that he has been successful at getting bits of Olympic-security-related information from the military and the RCMP–led Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit. “The biggest veil of secrecy about the Olympic security is the VPD,” Shaw said. “The $1 billion or $900 million [Olympic security budget] that [VISU head] Bud Mercer admits to does not count VPD. That’s why I’ve said over and over again that the costs are higher than $1 billion because the VPD cost is going to be huge.” VPD spokesperson Const. Lindsey Houghton told the Straight he has “no idea” how much overtime the department will accrue during the Olympics. “Budgetary numbers always kind of ebb and flow,” Houghton said in a phone interview. “We won’t know probably till afterwards.” Houghton also pointed out that overtime costs will not be paid out of the VPD budget. He said that there’s an arrangement among the City of Vancouver, Vanoc, and VISU to pay for Olympic policing costs.
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