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Make Toronto Safer using Modern Policing Technology

Josh Domingues

Josh Domingues

August 9, 2026

All Toronto Memos

Make Toronto Safer using Modern Policing Technology

Josh Domingues

Josh Domingues

August 9, 2026

Key Messages
01

Since the pandemic, assault, vehicle theft, and petty crime have remained high and general disorder like open hard drug use and encampments have grown significantly. The proven solution to these issues is increased police presence.

02

Toronto has already committed increased funding to try and get more police on the streets but this is costly and inefficient. By investing in modern policing technology the City can reduce paperwork for all officers, redeploy the free resources and achieve their presence goals.

03

Plate-reader systems, drone-as-first-responder, and a single operational hub for the associated data are modern technologies that have been deployed and proven in municipalities across Canada and the United States. Toronto should adopt these proven solutions.

Procure a modern policing stack — a fixed plate-reader network, drone-as-first-responder, one real-time operations hub — to tackle crime and convert freed officer hours into visible presence where disorder concentrates.

Summary

Toronto recorded 41,623 major crimes in 2025. Assaults are 12 percent above pre-pandemic levels, auto theft is up 36 percent 14, and non-fatal opioid-overdose calls to paramedics up 46 percent in a single year 3. This has led to growing anxiety over public safety leading to reduced transit use, and even outmigration 2.

The proven mechanism 15 to combat disorder and crime is to put more police officers on the street in the most affected neighbourhoods. New technologies exist that would allow the City to do exactly this while allowing police to do what they do best, serving and protecting in the community.

Other cities already use fixed licence-plate-reader networks, dock-based drone-as-first-responder models, and searchable real-time operations hubs to automate routine police work. Toronto should do the same. Deploying a modern platform would attack high-volume crime and free up officer hours that can be redeployed as foot patrol where disorder concentrates.

The Recommendation

Toronto should buy back police presence with technology and spend it on the street. Done effectively this would create a presence dividend: every hour a machine can save on vehicle-crime detection, call verification, or evidence assembly is an hour the Toronto Police Service can redeploy a visible officer.

The recommendation is to create a single platform decision executed through the Toronto Police Service Board: a fixed-site licence-plate-reader network to complete the mobile system already installed on more than 560 police vehicles 4; a dock-based drone-as-first-responder program based on the model Vancouver launched in June 2026 as one of Canada’s first 5; and one real-time operations and evidence hub that makes the data feeds from these new sources — alongside the cameras the city already owns — searchable in a single place.

Adopting this technology would not only directly attack the categories of crime that stayed high following the pandemic like auto theft or break-and-enter and robbery investigation 14 but, more importantly it would also free up police hours that could be used to fund the street presence that everyday crime and disorder are proven to respond to 5.

Several companies have already built solutions that the city could adopt quickly. Flock Safety, the category-defining vendor in the United States, sells an integrated stack — plate readers, drones, live public-space video, one operating system — and reports that its network now assists a measurable share of case clearances in partner agencies 10; Axon, which already supplies the Service’s mobile plate-reader system 4, competes in the same category. Toronto should run a competitive procurement between these vendors to find a solution that is fit to resolve the city’s problems.

To make sure that these changes are lasting and achieve the maximum impact requires thoughtful governance. Seven years ago the Service walked away from gunshot-detection technology on legal advice 8. To avoid a similar outcome the Board can use the existing Use of Artificial Intelligence Technology Policy 9 as a binding framework, adopted before procurement. This will enumerate the purposes of data collection, specify a short fixed retention, prevent the use of facial recognition, outline the lack of data sharing with immigration or foreign enforcement, ensure Canadian data residency and public audit logs, as well as implement a sunset that forces re-authorization based on published results.

The Problem

Statistics show that there have been some recent improvements in the most violent crimes in Toronto with 45 homicides in 2025 against 85 the year before, and fatal shootings down by half in the same period 2. However, the crime Torontonians encounter day-to-day remains high and Torontonians don’t feel safer. The city recorded 41,623 major crimes in 2025 — three per cent more than in 2019, even after an 11 per cent drop from 2024’s peak of 46,681 14. Assault, the largest category, stood at 23,746 occurrences, 12 per cent above pre-pandemic levels and down only five per cent from 2024; auto theft, at 7,331, remained 36 per cent above 2019 even after falling a quarter from the peak 14. The wins are real but narrow and recent — the volume of crime residents experience is still high.

At the same time, the disorder residents encounter in public space — the kind that produces fear, degrades daily life, and keeps people out of places they pay for — sits far above its pre-pandemic level. The City’s own count of people sleeping outdoors, in parks, ravines and doorways, roughly tripled between April 2018 and October 2024, from 533 people to 1,615, and stood at 1,499 in October 2025 16. In 2025 alone, Parks, Forestry and Recreation logged 2,700 encampment wellness checks and outreach referrals and cleared 27,000 needles and pipes from 300 parks 17. Encampment structures have come down from a November 2024 high of 539 to 196 in December 2025 18 but they remain elevated and non-fatal opioid-overdose calls to Toronto Paramedic Services have kept climbing — 350 in January 2026 against 239 a year earlier 3.

Crime and disorder ultimately responds to police presence — consistent, visible, and local — which is the Service’s scarcest commodity. Currently police presence is currently bought the expensive way. The 2026 police budget rose $93.8 million, or 7.0 per cent, to $1.43 billion net, buying 143 new uniform positions toward a planned strength of 5,714 and holding Priority 1 response at 13.5 minutes 1. This is happening while officer hours remain consumed by work that machines can already do better — following strict driving patterns with the hope of passing a stolen car, dispatching two cruisers to verify a call, canvassing blocks for camera footage. The governing instrument, the Community Safety and Policing Act, 2019 (in force April 2024), leaves deployment with the Chief and policy with the Board 11. However, Council sets the budget and the associated requests and has the ability to shape a solution.

Implementation

Focus technology use on enabling more police presence. City Council should request the Toronto Police Service Board to direct that technology procurement under this program include estimates of the officer-hours returned to the street. The new freed hours should be redeployed as visible foot patrol in the areas already identified as hotspots for everyday-crime and overdose data, with specific deployment determined by the Chief. The additional presence hours, locations, response times, and clearance results should be reported publicly each year. This presence dividend, not the device count, is the program’s success metric, and the one that the sunset in point 2 is tied to.

Adopt the guardrail framework to ensure permanence. City Council should request the Board, in consultation with the City Solicitor and the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, to extend its Use of Artificial Intelligence Technology Policy 9 into a binding framework for this program. This would include: enumerated purposes for the data, fixed short retention on the pattern of the existing plate-reader schedule (reads purged within one day, hits within 365 4), prohibition of facial recognition and of data sharing with immigration or foreign enforcement, full end-to-end encryption, use restricted to investigations or real-time needs, Canadian data residency, public audit logs, independent annual audits, and re-authorization by the Board every three years.

Complete the plate-reader system. City Council should request the Board to direct the Chief of Police to bring forward a business case and competitive procurement for a fixed-site licence-plate-reader network on major corridors — aimed squarely at an auto-theft count still 36 per cent above 2019 14 — integrated with the 560-vehicle mobile fleet and its retention schedule 4, for consideration in the 2027 Budget process.

Stand up a drone-as-first-responder system. City Council should request the Board to direct the Chief to establish a dock-based drone-as-first-responder pilot, sited by the Chief with priority given to the areas with the highest priority-call volumes, based on the Vancouver and Durham Region models 5,6 under Transport Canada’s 2025 beyond-visual-line-of-sight rules 7. This should include triage protocols that route verified mental-health and disorder calls to the City’s community-based mental-health response service 12, instead of a cruiser where no offence is in progress.

Build one operations hub for the new platform. City Council should request the Board to direct the Chief to consolidate fixed and mobile plate-reader, drone, and existing City camera feeds into a single searchable real-time operations platform that shortens investigation time in every category. Separately request the Toronto Transit Commission Board to make existing transit camera feeds available under the same framework — with live public-space video only in locations approved under the Board’s policy framework and published in advance. Costs for the new platform can fall under the Service’s capital technology program.

Financial impact. The proposals would come with a modest incremental cost, proposed for consideration in the 2027 Budget process. The fixed-camera networks, drone network, and platform licensing are operating-scale purchases. The capital should fit within the technology envelope of the Service’s 2026–2035 capital program ($142.2 million) 1. The aim of the program would be offset savings — automated detection and call verification returning paid officer hours to patrol.

Risks and objections. The strongest objections to this system will be around privacy. A fixed-camera network creates a level of surveillance beyond what a cruiser-mounted reader currently captures. Civil-liberties organizations have campaigned against these networks in the United States, where some agencies shared plate data with immigration enforcement 13. However, the city already has the guardrails needed to ensure that this procurement prohibits the uses that generated the American controversies. Data will be kept in Canada, use will be restricted to actions that are minimally invasive and fully audited. The continued use of the system will automatically sunset unless the Board re-authorizes it on published results.

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