‘Community and police working together’: Calgary police roll out community outreach van

The Calgary police are using a new tool to have more friendly conversations with members of the public.

The CPS mobile community engagement vehicle was introduced on Wednesday outside a grocery store in Sunnyside.

“We were seeing how it was increasingly harder and harder for people to come and talk with us. District offices are famously not exactly the most inviting places for people to come and interact with us,” Acting Sgt. Anthony Thompson said. “So we thought, let’s flip this on its head and let’s get out to the community and start engaging them a little more. It’s critically important that we intersect people where they live their daily lives.”

Thompson was chatting with Hillhurst/Sunnyside residents and people who worked in the area on Wednesday, handing out pamphlets and responding to their concerns with information or advice.

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Calgary Police Service’s District 3 community engagement team will be taking an aging police van wrapped in a blue graphic to different parts of the district on a weekly basis, as part of the pilot program.

District 3 is bordered by the Bow River on the south, Deerfoot Trail on the east, reaches north to Nose Hill Park and includes the University of Calgary campus to the west.

Thompson said the pilot came out of feedback from the community, seeking more friendly, on-the-ground interactions with police.

“We saw how our ability to engage with the public was slowly separating, and it was a global issue, just not Calgary,” he said. “And then the citizen survey report came back saying that we wanted more engagement with police. So we thought, okay, well, how can we start this at a basic level, right?”

He said the pilot will be evaluated on qualitative metrics.

“We want to solve the issues, the inherent issues going on, but it’s not going to happen overnight,” Thompson said. “But at the end of the day, it’s our job just to be with the community, listen to them, see where they’re coming from and then we can build some plans around that as well – community and police working together.”