Calgary’s downtown safety table has put forward three initial recommendations to help boost security in the core, including having a downtown police station.

Co-chairs Heather Morley from Inn from the Cold and Mark Garner, executive director of the Calgary Downtown Association, outlined their initial recommendations on Thursday with the media. The group has been at work since last July on a 120-day mission to improve safety in the downtown.

They first met with the media for an update back in September, when they named the members of their committee to begin work in earnest. Now, they come back with an initial set of recommendations that includes a downtown police station, 24/7 coordinated street outreach teams, and immediate funding for housing and specialized facilities for the most vulnerable Calgarians with complex needs.

“I think we have found like-hearted like-minded people to be able to deliver on what needs to happen for the most vulnerable in our community, while taking into consideration the business concerns and the economics of downtown,” said Garner.

Morley said we’re in the middle of an opioid crisis unlike what’s been seen before. It’s the same with housing.

“What we did five years ago isn’t working and I think we’ve heard very clearly through the consultations that we need to do differently, and we need to do better going forward,” she said.

The 24/7 outreach teams, partnered with uniformed officers, will cover the downtown core area, plus around Fort Calgary and East Village. The teams will be coordinating and communicating with other units like police, transit, bylaw, businesses and corporate security in the respective areas.

“Some situations require a uniformed response, and some don’t. Some require that social worker who has experience with mental health and addictions that can support that situation,” said Morley.

Downtown station presence

Calgary police Chief Mark Neufeld spoke to LiveWire Calgary about a downtown police station, during a recent year-end interview. He said that it was time to reconsider a physical police presence in the downtown after the Victoria Park brick-and-mortar location was shut down in 2017.

Garner said that they could build off the safety hub model that’s been started, but they’re looking for a location where citizens can report incidents and there could be a deployment of officers.

“We want to see that turned into a bit of a more of a neighbourhood hub similar to what’s in Vancouver, where there’s reporting and deployment of service and that would be the first tactical step,” he said.

“But, based on density that we’re seeing with office to residential conversion, we’re all focused on increasing, post-secondary downtown, you’ve got the entertainment precinct development on Stampede grounds – there’s a need to have services through a station in the downtown core.”

The third of the initial recommendations deals with those folks who have highly complex addictions and mental health needs.

Morley acknowledged this has been a need for years that hasn’t been fully addressed through the community care model, as it lacks supports within the community. She said they heard from stakeholders there are big gaps in the system. Those need to be closed, she said.

“We still haven’t seen that happen. It has to happen, because all of the folks that we talked to whether it was the people in the encampments, the HELP teams, all of the people, students, business owners, it’s like we have services and then people are falling into the cracks.

“We’ve got to be better about eliminating those cracks, and one of them is increased housing and services.”

More cash is needed, final recommendations coming

Both Garner and Morley acknowledged that their plan – even the first three recommendations – would need more cash from either the city or the province, or both, to execute.

Garner said they haven’t yet been engaged with the province to the level they should be. He said once the report is completed, there’s legwork for he and Morley to engage other partners they’ll need to make this work.

“I think that’s what’s come out of this table is to identify, very clearly to Heather’s point, is we say all the time, all three levels of government need to work together in a way that they’ve never worked together before,” Garner said.

Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek, in a prepared media release, said that she’s aware there has been a lot of engagement, reports, research and analyses done on this issue. Still, there’s a challenge in implementing long-term solutions.

“While the three recommendations we are hearing today will not solve this wicked problem, taken together they provide tangible and meaningful first steps that can be built upon to improve the downtown experience for all,” she said in the release.

The safety leadership table will continue to refine its recommendations through final consultation with the 40+ groups they’ve spoken to thus far. There’s no specific funding request now, but when that should be attached to a final report come March.

“I think we’ve heard there’s been a lot of reports that have been done over the years and they sit on shelves, and I think our core focus is this is not going to be one that sits on a shelf,” said Garner.  

“We’re going to advocate very strongly that these get implemented. The community wants to see these things implemented, and the city will need to report back to the community on the implementation of things and the benefits its providing the community.”