After 35 years of policing, Calgary’s police Chief Katie McLellan said that she still loves being a police officer.

That’s the kind of long-term shift she’s hoping to embed in Calgary Police Service (CPS) officers moving into 2026.

McLellan took over the job of Calgary’s top cop in May 2025, when former Chief Mark Neufeld left the organization after six years. She now leads a team of 3,222 sworn and civilian members combined, at least until January 2027, when her contract is up for review.

Her career in first response actually started when she was 18, when McLellan worked in Calgary’s 911 call centre. She spent two years there before becoming a sworn officer at 20. But for a stint with the RCMP and in oil and gas, McLellan has spent the bulk of her life as a Calgary police officer, beginning as a beat cop and navigating her way through the CPS.

Policing has changed a lot in that time, Chief McLellan said.

“When I was a young recruit, 30 plus years ago, if we got a call with weapons and drugs, it would be the call of the year, and everyone would have to come and take pictures,” she said.

“Now our young members are seeing that every single day, lots of trauma now, and lots of mental health and addictions and so forth.”

In 2025 to date, Calgary has seen 19 homicides, which is down from 21 in the same period in 2024, and down considerably from the long-term trend in Calgary.

Public perception of safety along CTrain lines and in the downtown continues to be a persistent issue, with public safety ranking among the most important issues in Calgary’s 2025 fall survey of citizens.

Those two things dovetail into an interesting policing picture for 2026.

Perception of safety, crime severity, and value for policing dollars

When Chief McLellan presented during the 2025 Calgary budget deliberations, the precipitous drop in Calgary’s Crime Severity Index – from 80 to 63, with lower being better – over the past three years came up during questions.

The national average is 77.9, according to the Statistics Canada measure.

McLellan told councillors at the time that it was because of the great work Calgary police officers are able to do.

“We are doing the best that we can with the limited resources that we have. But there’s a lot of covert work, there’s a lot of intelligence work, there’s a lot of proactive work in those areas,” she said.

“Hence, we’re able to keep that number where it is.”

At that same meeting, McLellan mentioned that the potential four-year budget ask for personnel would be in the neighbourhood of 660 additional Calgary police officers. That would help account for the growth of the city and manage attrition, she said. CPS loses roughly 90 officers per year to retirement and other reasons, while the population continues to grow.

McLellan said that the CPS budget currently sits at around half a billion dollars.

Meanwhile, Calgary city councillors have increasingly talked about achieving value for citizen property taxes. They’ve also discussed the stubbornly high perception of public safety.

So, when you throw the drop in homicides, shootings, and a substantial drop in Calgary’s Crime Severity Index with the current service levels, in with public perception of safety and the proposed 165 officers per year, Chief McLellan justified the value by describing the current state of response in Calgary.

She used the example of reporting a break and enter after it had happened, and the homeowner returned to their property. The timeline for police response is three hours.

“Right now, we’re not even meeting three hours,” she said.

“A priority two call, I think we have to get there within 20 minutes, and so there’s some calls that we’re not getting to.”

She noted that when she first started as an officer in 1989, the priority one response for a crime in progress was seven minutes. It’s still seven minutes today, she said.

When balancing the front-line needs of safety, along with neighbourhood requests for more community action teams (combined mental health and wellness), traffic safety teams, school resource officers, and community resource officers, McLellan said the need is great.

“If we want all of that, if we want a five-star police service where we’ve got members in schools, where we’ve got more policing crisis – PACT, where we’ve got more traffic safety teams, all of that has to get taken into consideration,” she said.

Operation Order

In early November, Calgary police executed Operation Order, a downtown public safety sweep, citing a six-year high in violence against unhoused, security staff, and social sector workers in select core areas.

The police action had its critics, with some calling for less enforcement (and corresponding future budget asks) and for the police to advocate for more housing.

Chief McLellan said Operation Order was built on the prior work of Operation Certainty, a three-month plan that came with fewer resources. She said they received feedback from various stakeholders in the downtown that there wasn’t enough of an officer presence during Operation Certainty and that a negative perception of safety persisted.

She cited a 20 per cent increase in social disorder, assaults, street robberies, and, in particular, carjackings over the summer months.

“I have been very clear, and I have said that we will not become like other cities, and not to mention any city at all, but we cannot have areas in this city where people are free to go to, they don’t want to live down there, they don’t want to work in there,” Chief McLellan said.

It’s had an impact beyond the statistics of arrests or social service connections, McLellan told LWC. She said in the days following, their undercover teams went hunting for drug traffickers around the city, and they couldn’t locate them. When those officers asked people if the traffickers went to other areas of the city, the people said no.

“They went somewhere else, and it wasn’t in this city,” she said.

“Just that, there has been a major impact. So, drug traffickers were not there, preying on our vulnerable individuals and trying to sell them drugs.”

She acknowledged that it can’t be a “one-and-done” situation either. McLellan said after Operation Order, they’d heard from several other communities about having a similar crime sweep.

“We will continue to do that, and we will continue to keep the city safe, and we will continue to intervene with compassion and with professionalism,” McLellan said.

Traffic safety and building officer morale

A troubling trend had been emerging over the past couple of years, and it took a turn for the worse in 2025: Traffic safety deaths.

Calgary has seen the highest number of people killed on city streets in 10 years, including an all-time high of 15 pedestrians.

The City of Calgary and the CPS launched a road safety campaign in September to help curb the number of incidents. Further, Calgary city councillors approved an additional $7.5 million to help with pedestrian improvements around the city.

While the Calgary police and peace officers launched Traffic Safety Teams in March of 2025 and were successful in reimplementing automated enforcement at a handful of Calgary intersections, more work is yet to come, McLellan said.

Right now, the Calgary police are operating with three of four teams fully staffed in the Traffic Section. The hope is to get the fourth one fully operational. McLellan also said they’ve had continued success working with the Government of Alberta on business cases for more intersections with automated enforcement. Five additional submissions have been made.

Looking into 2026, Chief McLellan said that one of her priorities is to retool the police service to handle the rigors of modern policing for the next 10 to 15 years. That could include turning some work over to technology.

It’s all a part of examining a new deployment model that could include online or virtual policing, McLellan said.

“Those are all those things that we are exploring to see – how can we be more effective, so that we can be more efficient?” McLellan said.

“But for me, it’s about transparency. It’s about more visibility. It’s about enhancing those relationships and really delivering and getting to where people need us when they’re in crisis.”

It also means engagement, both internally and externally. She wants police to be more proactive instead of reactive, working on relationships with communities and with community partners.

That desire starts from within the CPS itself, McLellan said. She wants to set that example, be a “people chief.”

“So, really enjoy getting to know people, get to talk to people, talk with people. There’s not enough hours in the day,” Chief McLellan said.

“People do amazing things in the service, and it’s really about changing the morale, changing the culture, and setting us up for the next 10, 15 years of policing in the city.”