Some city peace officers will be under the direct command of the Calgary Police Service, as part of an integrated operation to deal with the fentanyl trade and social disorder.
The Safer Calgary initiative will see Calgary peace officers partnered with the CPS Community Engagement Response Teams (CERT) and deployed to deal with crime and social disorder related to the fentanyl drug trade.
This comes as Alberta’s Public Safety and Emergency Services Minister Mike Ellis outlined the province’s strategic direction for local law enforcement branches to work together under the guidance of an area’s municipal police force.
Last week, LWC was the first to report that peace officers would work in conjunction with CPS, though few details on their deployment were provided.
On Wednesday, Minister Ellis said that more than 800 peace officers would be working with the municipal police force in large and mid-sized cities.
“Under this initiative, community peace officers from 34 large and mid-sized municipalities will immediately begin to coordinate operations with local police by integrating their communication, their dispatch systems while on patrol and when responding to calls,” he said.
“Doing so will create the operational consistency needed to combat fentanyl crime as well as social disorder with compassion as well as efficiency.”
In a statement to LWC, the Calgary Police Service said that earlier this month they launched an integrated major operation under CPS command. Units will be deployed to cover hot spots in the downtown and around the city, CPS said.
“As a part of this operation, the City’s Peace officers assigned to this operation will be deployed according to the direction of CPS command,” the statement read.
“We continue to collaborate and participate in regular leadership meetings to address public safety concerns.”
CPS said they are not taking command of all peace officers as they have a much broader mandate than dealing with social disorder and illicit drug calls.
Teams already in alignment, mayor says
Mayor Jyoti Gondek said this overarching strategy to deal with fentanyl and social disorder was already something that Calgary had in place. She said it was a part of the 2023 public transit safety strategy.
That new strategy included the adoption of a district hub model that brought together different law enforcement units and set a benchmark of seven-to-10-minute response times to calls.
“I can tell you that locally, we have taken the fentanyl issue very seriously over time, long before this specter of tariffs began to rise, because we take addiction and death in our city very seriously,” she said.
“We created a coordinated response that would allow us to help people who are in crisis at the same time, it would allow CPS to go after the people that are providing these drugs to folks who are literally dying.”
Minister Ellis said that this initiative wasn’t indefinite.
“We will evaluate the effectiveness and work closely with municipalities and law enforcement agencies to assess its impact,” he said.
“Our goal is to take the strongest possible approach to public safety while ensuring our measures are effective, they’re practical and responsive to the needs of communities right across Alberta.”
Minister Ellis said that there would be more clarity on how this would be funded as they continue conversations with the federal government. He said as cities continue to ramp up the deployment, they may have to incur overtime costs until there are additional officers to cover this activity.
They’re hoping the federal government can come to the table to cover some of those costs.
