“Arresting is connecting.”

When I read how CPS Chief McLellan was attempting to frame last week’s exercise, I couldn’t believe it. 

On November 5, the Calgary Police executed Operation ORDER, a military-style exercise that swept through downtown in force, marching in line and flanked by officers on horseback to reclaim downtown from… the sick and the homeless? 

Arresting is not connecting. Arresting is incarceration. 

As an ex-police commissioner, I know Operation Order’s military-style performance was a public relations stunt intended to do three things: to intimidate the new Council, to remind our most vulnerable to stay in line when the police are coming, and to assure the public that the police service is, in fact, still the police force.

I do not believe the CPS when they claim the timing was merely coincidental. Capitalizing on the public’s fear to funnel more money into policing is a strategy used by police services across the Western world. This demonstration is a self-evident show of force in advance of the City of Calgary budget discussions to influence a city council with the power to boost CPS funding. I hope this city council can recognize when it is being gamed. 

The police carry immense social capital with the public – they know it, and they use it. I invite the police to stop spending their capital on policing poor people, and instead to use that social capital to advocate for the real solutions to crime and poverty. 

I know from experience that Calgary police officers do not want to be social workers. They do not want to be health care workers or 24-hour social service hubs. They do not want to witness the violence of poverty, the fallout, and the trauma left in its wake. As they often say, the “police just want to be the police.” 

Which is why, in the face of this policing performance, I feel obligated to remind Calgarians that you can’t police your way out of poverty. However, policing poverty can be very effective in moving poverty from one area to another.

No one contests that something needs to be done

Seeing visible poverty is distressing. Bearing witness to the ongoing addictions and mental health crisis is distressing. It is distressing because it begs the question: How did we, as a society, allow things to get to this point? 

No one is contesting the fact that something needs to be done. The important question is what to do. Should we use policing to shift poverty around from one area to the next? Or should we invest in the housing and support services needed to get people off the streets? 

As a citizen of this City, spending the equivalent of several hundred thousand dollars to issue $200 tickets to those who make less than $2,000 a month is a waste of resources.  Flanking our most vulnerable while on horseback is a waste of resources; however, it is a symbol of the oppressive force of poverty.

According to CPS Superintendent Scott Boyd, 75 Calgarians are known to commit almost all of the crime in these areas. And yet, the last point in time count showed 3,121 people were living unhoused in Calgary. That’s approximately two per cent of the homeless population committing almost all of the crime that yesterday’s operation was meant to address. 

Perhaps we should provide a home to the 98 per cent of unhoused persons who need somewhere to go, so that the police can do their job and focus on the two per cent that represent an actual criminal element.

Yesterday’s actions are mirror images of the use of military-style force against impoverished communities all throughout North America. The CPS’s Operation ORDER resembled the ICE raids seen south of the border. Calgary, for a moment, appeared like a city under military occupation. According to the CPS, if the new city council gives them the resources, this occupation will not be the last. 

But do you feel safer? In the last several budget cycles, the Calgary Police have never seen a budget cut, despite the fears of defunding. Trust me, I know. The reality is that policing poverty does not work, but it does boost police budgets. 

For the last 6 years, what I have asked my friends and allies in policing for is to just once use the social capital that comes with the badge to demand more than just boots on the ground. 

I asked them to demand more homes, to demand more health care, to demand more than just budgets and deference.

So, looking to the future, when this new city council moves to debate motion after motion to limit the construction of homes by reversing parts of the housing strategy, I invite the police to show up in force, in uniform, boots shined and badges worn proudly, straddling the steps of city hall like they did downtown, and demand that city council invest every dollar they have in the housing needed to really clean up our streets. 

That would be an inspiring commitment to making Calgary safer.

• Courtney Walcott is the former Ward 8 Calgary city councillor, and an advocate for Calgary’s Housing Strategy