Calgary police chief talks gangs, downtown security, provincial relations

Calgary police chief talks gangs, downtown  security,provincial relations and protests
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Police Chief Mark Neufeld  spoke with CTV News Calgary's Jefferson Humphreys to look at the  city's 2024 police  year, as well as its  outlook for 2025.
Police Chief Mark Neufeld  spoke with CTV News Calgary's Jefferson Humphreys to look at the  city's 2024 police  year, as well as its  outlook for 2025.
Topics covered  included gang activity in the city, downtown  security, police relations with the province and  dealing with a growing number of  protests.
Humphreys: I wonder if we can start with gang  activity today? ... Has anything significant  changed in 2024  on this issue?
The University of Calgary  responded with restraint to  the Gaza  protests in  May, the report says
Neufeld: We made good progress here in 2024. We talked last year about the focus  on offenders and the fact that we had 1,000 or 1,100 people in Calgary  who were involved in  this way  of life. Dangerous places and dangerous  activities.
This year so far we have dealt with 69 shootings.  ...I think last year when we sat down for this  interview we were about 95 and we ended the year  at 100.  So we're  down about  27% this  year so that's looking  pretty good.
And if you remember  last year, I  think in  2022 we had 127 shootings.  So that's a  positive trend, although the problem is  we had 69  shootings. Even though the number of  guns has gone down, I think the quality of arrests and the seizure of  weapons used in crimes has gone up, and I think  that reflects the good work  that is being done.  ...I want to  fully congratulate the  members on the work  that they have done.
We are talking about inner-city safety. ... What progress  has been made  during the  year?
I would say it's a bit of a mixed bag  when it comes to downtown  security. On the positive side,  a lot has been done. There's been a lot of  investment, a lot of interventions  in this system.
If I think  back to this time last year,  there was talk of the  50-person grant that was  given by the provincial government. ... We  took those 50 officers and turned them into what we  call community engagement response teams that went into each of the districts to  specifically focus on safety in public  spaces.
All of this has been implemented, although the  final four districts  won't be implemented until September.
The province  has opened  its navigation  center. ... We have  a community court. We have the SMART program.  ...We also have the  Opioid Addiction Program.
This has  resulted in  fewer calls for service from the  public. But the other side of  the story is  that people  in the city center continue to say they don't feel safe.  Numbers are one thing.  Perception of safety is  another.
Now it's about looking  at what's  complementary, what adds value, what might be  contradictory and  continuing to  adapt in 2025.
What  are your concerns about  relations with the province going  forward? We have always had a very good relationship with the province. I think the UCP government is  a very  law and order government, so  it has a lot of positive  common ground with  the public  policies that they have  adopted and that we  support.
We, the Calgary Police Service and the Alberta Association of Chiefs of Police, work closely with them to  advance their public policy  goals. So we certainly expect that when we have  front-line information on issues  like the  effectiveness of photo radar and intersection safety devices, we  will be  asked, and we  have been. We  have provided the  information that we have. ... There was no  acknowledgement of the information and  now we hear  anecdotes when the decision is made  as to what is happening at  any given time in  Hinton.
I don't know  if the observations made in places like Hinton or Leduc are generalizable to the  third largest city in the  country.
That raises concerns about other issues  that big cities have to work with the  province.
The reality of  these kinds of  things is  that we are not happy with the level of engagement,  we are not happy with the extent to which our input  has been taken into account in this particular case. But  we have a lot of important work to do on a lot of other  issues, so  we will continue to work with the provincial government. But I certainly hope  that this is not a  harbinger of things to come in terms of the extent to which they  feel their partners are close.
We have seen  some very lively political  demonstrations in recent years. ...  A lot of questions  have been raised  about the use of force and what constitutes hate speech and  things like that. I wonder what you learned this year and what  you'll get in 2025?
These are the  kinds of things  we're going to continue to  see as the world evolves around geopolitics.
This is a very  fast-changing environment. We started 2024 primarily  facing challenges  related to anti-LGBTQ and anti-trans  protests and then that  turned into an increased number of protests and demonstrations from the pro-Palestinian community and I would say an  increased level of this divides the  community. , and I think  that's where the problem  starts.
It's a very difficult balance to strike, but it's one that has to be struck by the police, working with the community, making sure that communities are able to, in times like this, get out into the public spaces and to be able to express their Charter rights. But, at the same time, to the extent that those expressions are negatively impacting the community and impacting the Charter rights of the broader community, those are very difficult conversations to be had.

What we found was when groups work with the police—we have protest liaison teams, we have officers assigned to the communities—to the extent to which groups wish to work with the police, a lot of the temperature can be turned down and we can facilitate safe protests. To the extent to which that's not the case, there's more likely to be difficulties and those will result in enforcement and this type of thing.

There's probably lessons to be learned on both sides, and those are lessons that can be carried forward into 2025.

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