Edmonton Police Chief Rod Knecht is convinced the former remand centre, downtown at 96 Street and 103A Avenue, would make a suitable location for the wellness centre he’s been promoting for several years.
He’s even brought some private money on board to help with the conversion, yet he can’t get the bureaucratic go ahead to make it happen.
READ MORE: Old Edmonton Remand Centre eyed as possible site for new inner city wellness centre
Boyle Street Community Services has promoted a facility with wrap around services to help the homeless with addiction issues and mental illness. However, hopes that it would have been included in the provincial government’s spring budget were dashed.
Knecht has worked connections in the private sector to try to get the ball rolling. “I’ve talked to philanthropists in this city who will support it. They’ll actually volunteer their people, contractors to come in and refresh that place.”
“I’ve talked to ministers. I’ve talked to people in the community that are supportive of that. I am perplexed why it has taken so long for us to get this off the ground, because everybody I’ve talked to said it’s a good idea. It’s just that it requires some collective will.”
READ MORE: A look inside Edmonton’s old Remand Centre
“I have toured the remand centre,” he told reporters at his semi-regular ‘coffee with the chief’ get together. “The first and second floor of that remand centre could be any building in this city.”
“It has a dental facility, a medical facility, it has a gymnasium. It has a fully serviced kitchen facility there. It has everything a person would need to get healthy or be healthy and stay healthy.”
GALLERY: Inside the old Edmonton remand centre.
The old facility was shuttered four years ago, when a new, $580-million, 2,000-bed jail was opened on the northwestern edge of the city. Before closing, the infamous downtown facility often housed as many as 800 inmates at a time – that was more than double what it was originally built for in 1979.
READ MORE: New Edmonton Remand Centre to house growing inmate population
Knecht has long supported having several agencies share in dealing with the mentally ill, so expensive police resources aren’t tied up on repeat calls. He said his early days in policing gave him good insight into how to break the cycle of addiction.
“In my role as an undercover operator, I bought heroin. I socialized with those people every single day, from sunrise to sunset,” Knecht explained.
“I know how they think and the last thing they worry about is getting off their drugs. They worry about their next fix. None of them like being an addict. They want to get better. They want to reconnect with family. They want to reconnect with their life.”
Addiction issues are gaining more attention, as local Chinatown residents continue to protest a series of supervised injection sites in the immediate area. Knecht said he sympathizes with them, and thinks a solution can be found. “You talk to the people that are protesting this, I think that they’re not immovable.”
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READ MORE: Opponents of safe injection services near Edmonton’s Chinatown plan protest
“They have a position. They appreciate the position of the addict and I think if everybody works together here we’ll get to a better place and Edmonton will get it right. But I don’t think we want to go off half-cocked and I worry about that sometimes.”
READ MORE: Edmonton city council moving ahead with safe injection services
City council, by a 10-1 vote has taken the next step to have Health Canada and the federal government review the installation of supervised safe injection services.
The services will be offered at four locations: Boyle McCauley Health Centre, Boyle Street Community Services and the George Spady Society – which are all north of downtown near Edmonton’s Chinatown area. (Medically supervised safe injection services will also be offered at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, but only for patients.)
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