Jan 27, 2010 - 10:09 AM

By Parvaneh Pessian

WHITBY -- As Durham Regional Police shakes up its frontline patrol structure, the Town of Whitby is feeling left out in the planning process.

The project to redraw the regional patrol map and create new work zones for officers, which has been in the works for several years, was met with shock and confusion at a recent operations committee meeting.

"It's a major change in policing and hopefully it's going to work," said Deputy Mayor Joe Drumm, a member of the Durham police services board, broaching the topic under new and unfinished business.

The revised patrol map will move away from the municipal boundaries and instead divide the region into five areas: West, Central West, Central East, East and North divisions.

This means officers stationed in Whitby, previously known as 18 Division, are now part of the Central West division and will be tackling portions of Oshawa. Meanwhile, some officers who start their shift in Scugog, formerly located under the North Durham or 15 Division, will look after sections of north Whitby.

Mayor Pat Perkins expressed her dismay at not having been notified of any changes to jurisdictional boundaries before the decision was made. Despite receiving correspondence from police on Dec. 14 -- including a letter from Police Chief Mike Ewles and a map outlining the changes in relation to Whitby -- she said she hadn't seen it until Jan. 8.

"Whitby is going to be serviced differently than it has been before and I'm not entirely sure that it's what we want," she said.

"This council has not ever in this term gone forward without consultation on major issues and the fact that this is going to impact our community without the public consultation, I find quite disturbing."

But Durham police spokesman Dave Selby said the changes are simply an "internal fine-tuning" of individual work areas for frontline patrol officers and should have no effect on the municipality.

"No one will notice anything different on the ground -- in fact, it's being done to actually enhance frontline response in Whitby and other communities by distributing the workload more evenly," he said.

Realignment of patrol zones is part of a larger police initiative called the patrol staffing analysis project, intended to improve internal approaches in an ongoing transition to a more pro-active problem-solving organization.

Durham Regional Police's marked patrol deployment zones have mirrored the municipal boundaries since the Region's inception in 1974. With the emergence of new technology, allowing better recording and analysis of calls for service, staff has been working to develop more efficient methods of response.

The changes are based on various factors, including volume, complexity and geographical barriers like marshes, lakes and major highways.

"It makes more sense," Mr. Selby said, "It's easier to break the work zones up so that it reduces the need for officers to drive over Hwy. 401, for example, to cover a work zone."

But this doesn't mean that there will be less officers in any given part of the region compared to the old system, he added.

"Where they begin their shift for an update and a briefing is one thing (but) where their patrolled work areas are is the key and the number of bodies working and patrolling in the areas is not changing at all."

Some of Durham's municipal councils have already requested that police attend an upcoming meeting to outline the specific changes and address concerns.

Chief Ewles is scheduled to drop by Whitby council chambers at 575 Rossland Rd. E. for the next operations committee meeting on Monday, Feb. 1.