A recent report to the Calgary Police Commission revealed the outcomes of two major police operations that have been ongoing since November 2025.

We really must be more honest about what policing social disorder and poverty is. In Calgary, it is a game of displacement – a three-card Monty – where we’re just shuffling poverty and disorder from one place to the next and calling it a success while we do it.

If we want to make our streets safer, we need our police leaders to be more explicit in their calls for systemic support. As loud as they demand money from city council for new officers, new training facilities, and shooting ranges, police leaders need to call for the systemic supports that will make their job easier by caring for the very people that get caught up in their police operations.

You cannot arrest your way out of poverty and social disorder. Arresting is not connecting. It is just arresting, and it just keeps a cycle of incarceration alive because the alternatives are underfunded and unsupported.

Two contrasting policing styles

The stark difference between the policing styles promoted by current Calgary police Chief Katie McLellan and the former Chief Mark Neufeld is most notable in their respective brand and slogans.

For former Chief Neufeld, in response to calls for alternative response models for people in crisis, he would say: “Just let the police be the police.”

For Chief McLellan, the brand and slogan she chose is “arresting is connecting.”

Neufeld rejected calls for police to take up space in the social service sector, instead pushing for appropriate services and responsible orders of government to take the necessary action to resolve issues of poverty, mental health, and people in crisis on our streets and in our communities.

“Arresting is connecting” is the polar opposite to Neufeld’s position. Chief McLellan describes “arresting is connecting” by saying that even though the people they arrest “may not be prosecuted through the courts… they have been connected with a resource.”

Where Neufeld wanted to step away from the social support side of dealing with vulnerable people, Chief McLellan is leaning in.

However, the likelihood of a vulnerable person first discovering support services following an arrest is extremely low, and as of yet, no data has been released to support this claim.

Normally, this type of PR would go unnoticed. However, the continued use of ‘arresting is connecting’ is because it is the brand slogan of a major police operation titled “Operation Order,” where hundreds of officers sweep downtown, writing tickets, executing warrants, and displacing vulnerable communities.

It’s a campaign slogan designed to garner public support while the police exercise campaigns of displacement that the public would otherwise look down upon as a cruel and unusual use of police resources.

Operation Order evolved into Operation Restore, where approximately 7,000 calls for service were made to CPS, which resulted in 160 charges. In 2025, the CPS noted that for operations like this, 90 per cent of the charges are withdrawn or stayed.

Setting up a big budget request?

One should question the purpose of these operations if the result isn’t really connecting people to services, and if these operations don’t meaningfully produce arrests or charges that make Calgary safer.

Even the Calgary Firefighters Association said there’s been an increase in drug overdose responses concentrated around the downtown. They said police operations haven’t made more than ‘blips’ in the number of calls.

At first, it was about restoring order and safety (hence the names of the operations), whereas now it appears CPS is reporting that the intended outcome is to “increase visibility, build relationships with community, businesses, [and] outreach groups.”

Operation Order and Operation Restore increasingly look like a PR campaign; it’s hard not to notice these police actions are in advance of a significant budget request to Calgary city council.

When these operations began, Chief McLellan was much clearer as she described that the social disorder and visible effects of poverty would not be solved by police alone.

“Enforcement alone cannot resolve these challenges. Our city needs 24-7 service options that meet individual needs in the moment. This includes safe day spaces with programming, decentralized services and alternative shelter options,” said Chief McLellan.

“We are working closely with our social agency partners to connect individuals to services when they need them.”

I very much agree with this sentiment. And yet, these types of operations are a part of a chain of decisions that are justifying incarceration as a means of filling the gaps left by an unfunded social service sector.

At first, it was bail reform promoted nationally by police chiefs. Once enacted, it saw already stressed remand centers in Alberta, which were already at capacity. Then it was involuntary care, where we pushed forced treatment for people in need against their will.

A system at capacity is not served by arresting individuals without a clear path through prosecution to rehabilitation.

If we truly want to make our society safer, we need to dispel the myth that “arresting is connecting.” The idea that these arrests led to resources that produced tangible outcomes for people is unfounded. Research shows arrest alone is linked to worse mental health, that prosecuting low-level offences makes reoffending more likely, not less, and that people leaving custody face sharply higher overdose risk.

Police operations aren’t making things safer

I move to rebrand ‘arresting is connecting’ as Operation ‘Keep-it-moving.’ These operations are fundamentally about displacement rather than public safety. — and there is a logical rationale behind it.

When it comes to letting poverty and the associated behaviours settle in a single area, it can cause long-term deterioration for a community. Compassion for people suffering should not automatically allow for behaviours that degrade a community to become rooted.

Compassion aside, the displacement that occurs as a result of concentrated policing in a community is a momentary reprieve for businesses and residences experiencing compassion fatigue.

When governments and systems of care fail, compassion fatigue sets in, and many people stop caring because they feel they are overwhelmed without a clear resolution.

People can turn to cruelty because they feel it’s cruel the way governments have abandoned them to be the front-line worker, the compassionate neighbour, and a martyr. I know that often that is how police officers feel.

But this isn’t making our society safer. Let’s be clear about that.

Arresting is not connecting.

It is a three-card Monty, where we just keep shuffling the problem, waving our hands to distract you from the fact that we cannot police our way out of poverty, no matter the expectation.