Police trying to reduce risk before next year’s St. Patrick’s Day gatherings

Christmas may be just around the corner, but regional police still have St. Patrick’s Day on their minds.

During a motion that was passed in April, the Waterloo Region Police Service (WRPS) Board instructed officers to create a working group, which reported on their progress for the first time at a board meeting on Dec. 10.

That report showed that the chaos of policing unsanctioned gatherings for St. Patrick’s Day is raising some alarm bells.

Those unsanctioned gatherings were once described as a “wicked problem” in a City of Waterloo report in 2020 and are still increasing in costs for emergency service providers year over year.

The unsanctioned gatherings for St. Patrick’s Day this year cost WRPS around $318,000 over three days, most of which was for officer overtime. That cost has risen from previous years. In 2023, police reported $267,000 in costs occurred, most of which again was for overtime hours. In 2022, WRPS spent about $204,100.

During the board meeting, a member of the Working Group, Deputy Chief Jen Davis, said they are working with local service providers, like fire and ambulance, to see how they can mitigate pressures in the future.

“The work remains ongoing, we hope to share some of the specific strategies for implementation in the new year and it really is both our primary goal of ensuring public safety but also recognizing there are rising financial costs associated with these events that need to be addressed as well,” said Davis.

“How do we actually mitigate the pressures that are associated with the demands that are placed upon us as well, as a result of St. Patrick’s Day?”

Since 2022, it has cost over a million dollars for local first responders and government agencies to respond to the unsanctioned gatherings. WRPS deployment costs have been close to $800,000 in that time.

Along with rising costs, crowd size has also been on the rise in the university area, but the largest crowd size was pre-pandemic in 2019.

A look at crowd numbers:

2015 –5,000-7,000
2016 – 10,000
2017 – 14,500
2018 – 22,000
2019 – 33,000
No unsanctioned gatherings or recorded numbers during the pandemic.
2022- 3,500 to 4,000
2023 – 8,000
2024 – 9,500

Davis mentioned they are actively engaging with post-secondary institutions to find new solutions but the work remains ongoing.

“We have recently met with representatives from the City of Waterloo as well and are actively engaging with post-secondary institutions, recognizing that all of youth are not associated necessarily to the schools but they do play a supportive role in helping to shift the trajectory of these unsanctioned events which have typically been seen as a right of passage by youth.”

The report from 2020 that the Working Group used to compile data referred to the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations as a right of passage for local youth, who are often attending one of the universities in Waterloo.

The Working Group said they are aiming to share more specific strategies to mitigate pressures to local service providers in 2025.