Winnipeg Police Chief Danny Smyth usually takes the first week of January off work, a time he admits he uses to reflect on the year.
With his second full year under his belt, he says he’s settling in.
“At its most basic level, just a little more comfortable in the job, knowing what to expect with the job and being able to roll with the punches a little bit easier with each passing year,” Smyth said.
Methamphetamine dominated as an issue that separated 2018 from previous years and Smyth says while the crisis continues to be front and centre, he says the momentum it’s gaining in political conversations gives him hope. It’s taken the place of fentanyl as the biggest concern on streets, Smyth says, he expects it’ll stay that way in the year ahead.
“I haven’t seen another drug per se. And opiods are still out there. Fentanyl, there was probably 40 deaths attributed to that in our jurisdiction last year,” Smyth added.
Smyth points to the meth crisis for the increase in armed stand-offs that have rattled several Winnipeg communities recently.
“Certainly the armed and barricaded situation that we had on Bannerman that we had to manage was unlike anything that we’ve encountered before, in terms of someone shooting a firearm from a second story of a residence. It did have to be managed very differently.”
He adds the Winnipeg Police Service will be rebranding its Street Crimes Division in the upcoming year to a focus on guns and gangs, because of the shift to more fire arms.
Smyth lists the discovery of Thelma Krull’s remains and the conviction of Guido Amsel as two of the stories that stuck out for him this year.
“I don’t know that it changes anything for the investigators. That file has always been open and they’ll work that file as best they can.
“Having a scene now, at least they can do some coordination around where her body was found.”
“The other investigation that stuck out for me was what we call Project Riverbank.”
“It was an organized crime file that really saw a multi-provincial investigation and that really disrupted some organized crime groups around the distribution of methamphetamine at a very high level.”
Smyth says he looks forward to a lot of things in 2019, including the completion of the MMIW inquiry.
“The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s Inquiry will come to a completion at the end of this year so I anticipate a report will come out next year with recommendations that I hope we’ll be able to model for other jurisdictions.”
Smyth says working on that balance and trying to ‘turn it off at night’ involves staying connected to people who don’t work in law enforcement.
“I have a family and I have other activities outside of work, so yeah, you gotta work at it a bit but I try to keep a pretty balanced existence. I still chum with some of the friends I grew up with that aren’t cops. So all of that kind of stuff helps me stay balanced.”
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