The technology of ones and zeroes is perfect in its simplicity, but humans are imperfect by nature and no one understands this more than the police.
With the Southern Georgian Bay OPP 2021 annual report presentation to Penetanguishene in the start of the year, detachment commander Inspector Joe Evans provided information to council, which had an interesting earmark.
Within the verbal report, Evans noted that there was a discrepancy on 19 impaired charges and administrative driver’s licence suspensions (ADLS) at 73, and noted how the number is much closer to the ADLS amount but that the OPP calculations couldn't correct the discrepancy.
MidlandToday contacted the local detachment regarding the technological discrepancies within policing statistics.
Const. David Hobson responded to Evans’ words with the following statement via email: “The detachment commander provided the 2021 annual report to Penetanguishene council with a preamble to give transparency about the statistics provided in his report.”
Said Evans in the presentation, “Impaireds at 19. It sounds good. It’s down from 103. I know that’s incorrect. I’ve run this a couple of times. I’ve had (OPP staff) run this a couple of times. This is just the big OPP machine that spits out the numbers, and it’s been consistent on 19. So, I’m not sure exactly where we’re missing our other ones.
“If you look at impaireds and then you go down to the bottom where it says ADLS suspensions, there’s 73 suspensions,” continued Evans. “Well, every time there’s an impaired, there’s a suspension. Now there’s other ADLS suspensions that aren’t necessarily impaireds, but usually not that far off. That’s why I know that there’s a little bit of a discrepancy there.”
While the logic is solid despite the discrepancy, MidlandToday asked the OPP if there were other municipalities or detachments that have encountered discrepancies in their data collection, and what efforts were being made to ensure accuracy for the sake of public transparency.
“The OPP Municipal Policing Bureau is responsible for the collection of data and billing information,” replied Hobson, “which is provided to detachment commanders for sharing with the policed municipalities. The information is constantly being collected and sorted from a variety of sources within the OPP.”
Further to the response, an email from Const. Gosia Puzio of OPP Central Region media relations clarified the impaired driving charges to be 94 in 2021, adding comments to the posed question.
“The OPP seeks to maximize the quality and value of organizational data and data-related assets used for statistical and business reporting, analyses, decision-making and resource deployment purposes.
“While we strive to ensure accuracy in statistics, errors can happen. Once we learn of an issue, the OPP will always move quickly to determine the cause of any issue and correct it,” Puzio concluded.
The slide presentations from the Southern Georgian Bay OPP detachment commander and from the Penetanguishene police services board chair can be located on the agenda page of the Town of Penetanguishene website.
Archives of council meetings are located on the Town of Penetanguishene YouTube channel.
