More members of Calgary’s police service believe they are doing a better job of delivering services to Calgarians, up from a pandemic and all-time low in 2022.

That number, at 80 per cent of surveyed members, was up from just 70 per cent two years ago, returning to the same level that was observed between 2017 and 2019.

During the regular October 2024 meeting of Calgary Police Commission, Illumina Research Partners delivered their annual employee survey which touched on the delivery of service, among a variety of different topics that reflect the morale of the Calgary Police Service.

Overall, said Illumina’s Vice-President Angela Storozuk said that a globally challenging environment for staffing, along with increased demands from the public has led to perceptions by officers that they no longer deliver services to the same levels as the past.

“Police strength per capita is continuing to decline, while at the same time, there are increasing service demands and workloads due to evolving crime patterns. All of this impacts police police services with higher mental health issues and burnout among officers, many police services feel understaffed and under resourced to deal with the challenging police environment,” Storozuk said.

Staffing was identified as a major reason for the level of engagement that CPS staff and officers had, with that percentage rising from 12 per cent for highly engaged employees to 22 per cent for low engagement employees.

“Inadequate staffing continues to be a top concern among all employees. However, the percentage of employees mentioning inadequate staffing has declined slightly this year across all three engagement levels, and furthermore, we are not seeing any concerns in the top mentions about heavy workloads,” she said.