Police chiefs and university professors from across North America are some of the many people gathering in Edmonton this week to discuss public safety.
They’re attending the inaugural Safety of Our Cities Conference hosted by the Edmonton Police Service.
Over the next three days, a range of topics will be explored, such as the next era of policing, using data to reduce crime and increase safety, guns and gangs, substance use and its impact on criminal activity, homelessness, crimes that affect vulnerable people such as trafficking, and much more.
“We are not alone. I mean these issues, some have it worse than others — but the reality is they are everywhere,” Edmonton Police Service Chief Dale McFee said Monday morning, adding police agencies can learn from each other.
“Let’s not chase something that hasn’t worked for 10 years. Let’s actually chase something that we can learn from some of the mistakes and make it better.”
The conference brings police services from across Canada and the United States together along with social agencies, corporations, public health and government officials.
In addition to networking, the goal is to find new approaches to address public health and safety issues.
“You’ve got a lot of people from across North America here to talk about real problems in our cities.
“So let’s find some solutions.”
Crime transcends city limits and even international borders: communities across North America all deal with unique challenges but when it comes to safety, many are facing with the same problems.
“Everybody seems to have an increase in violent crime since after the pandemic. Everybody seems to have recruiting and retention issues for officers in both the United States and Canada. And everybody’s dealing with the unhoused population,” Albuquerque Chief of Police Harold Medina said, adding seeing Edmonton’s issues first-hand was eye-opening.
At first glance, there are few things Edmonton and Albuquerque, N.M., have in common — but that city’s chief of police said dig deeper and everyone is facing the same problems.
He said that’s why attending conferences like this are important — taking home new ideas.
“It helps us be able to push back a little bit and be able to say, ‘Look, this isn’t something we’re the only ones going through.’ But there are others who have found paths forward and are seeing success in certain areas,” Medina said.
He said it’s notable that all communities also seem to be dealing with a lack of mental health and substance abuse resources.
“The true way for us to get out of this issue with our unhoused population is build up the resources in those two areas, to make sure that they get help for the underlying issues that are occurring in their lives.”
The Albuquerque Police Department used to have a problem with excessive force on people going through a mental health crisis and Medina said a strategy was launched to send social service-based providers to select calls instead of police — something he said has resulted in a 38-per cent drop in use of force complaints.
“Law enforcement isn’t always the right tool in the toolbox and we’re finding that these social service providers are much better tools than the police officers are,” Medina said.
“They’re having much more success with less force and getting people real results rather than just the band-aid that law enforcement provided.”
Edmonton police has its own version of the program — called a Police and Crisis Team or PACT — where officers are paired up with a mental health therapist, although the program here is smaller.
PACT constables are paired with mental health professionals from AHS Access 24/7, Addiction and Mental Health, who work together to respond to those who are experiencing a mental health crisis.
Vancouver Police Department Chief Adam Palmer noted when it comes to housing, just getting a roof over a person’s head isn’t enough of a solution. The supports to address their mental health or addictions issues also need to be considered.
“It’s not a cookie cutter solution. You have to find out what is the situation with each individual person,” Palmer said.
The issue of mentally ill people falling into the legal system instead of health-care is also a widespread issue.
“The one thing that is not the solution: us arresting individuals and releasing them back into the community without any resources is not a win for anybody. But that seems to be the norm in today’s criminal justice system,” Medina said.
Medina is looking to share his city’s success with handing mental health calls, an area where Albuquerque is looking to learn from its neighbours to the north: homicide prevention and gun control.
“I think our Canadian neighbours have done a good job over the years in regulating and controlling the amount of firearms. But right now, the amount of firearms across cities in the United States is astronomical,” he said.
Edmonton has had just over two dozen homicides in 2023 while Albuquerque, which is smaller, has recorded over 70.
“Last year I had 121 homicides, and I’m no different than most cities in the United States,” Medina said. “It seems that every individual our officers come across that is involved in some kind of criminal activity has the potential to be armed.
“When you have that many armed people — simple, everyday conflicts that used to be a fistfight or used to be a pushing match, now escalate to shootings.”
Meanwhile in Vancouver, Palmer said gun violence isn’t much worse than it was a few years ago, but the province as a whole has been dealing with gangs for some time now and it stems back to the drug trade.
“There’s definitely a connection to the drug world because organised crime, firearm shootings, making money as an organized crime figure gangster almost always ties back to drugs,” Palmer said.
Gun violence has been a problem in Edmonton for over a year now. In August, there were 22 reported shooting occurrences — up 36 per cent year over year.
Overall there have been 152 shootings in 2023, police said in a news release last week — up 32 per cent from 2022. The Edmonton Police Service has also seized 679 firearms year to date.
“So the point is — at conference, can we collectively figure out what we should be doing and shouldn’t be doing?” McFee said.
Another goal of the conference is to provide a space to talk about difficult topics like how to police vulnerable populations — such as the homeless — and build trust.
While eight per cent of Edmonton’s population identifies as Indigenous, the city says 58 per cent of people experiencing homelessness identify as Indigenous.
Having First Nations representatives at the conference who can explain how intergenerational trauma leads to addictions, crime, mental health issues and homelessness is key to reconciliation and understanding, says Cadmus Delorme, the former chief of the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan.
“Indigenous people, we don’t want pity, we don’t want anyone to feel sorry for us,” Delorme said. “Just understand we have our own solutions.
“We have our own models of healing and somehow we must all come together.”
Delorme noted there are nine First Nations in Canada with tribal police forces, such as the Tsuut’ina Nation near Calgary.
“Those are really important to empowering the Indigenous nations to create their own quasi-judicial systems. The resources and the expertise of the investigations and so forth, those will always be a shared area but, you know, to empower more Indigenous to create their own models, I believe would set the tone in a different perspective,” he said.
The Edmonton Police Service hopes the variety of perspectives help solve some the issues all cities, including Alberta’s capital, are facing.
Data — both how it’s collected and how it can help — is another major focus of the conference.
The conference includes a pitch competition where companies tell a panel of judges about tech and artificial intelligence that can help with safety and livability. The winner gets a $10,000 prize and exposure.
“If we do the same things over and over and expect different results, we are going to be very disappointed,” said Ashif Mawji, chair of the Edmonton Police Foundation. “So it’s about time we change things and bring in innovation.”
On Tuesday morning, the conference will explore guns and gangs and hear a keynote speech on innovative approaches to community safety from Dallas Police Department Chief Eddie Garcia.
Attendees will hear from a panel that includes representatives from the US Department of Justice Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the Phoenix Police Department, the Toronto Police Service and Vancouver Police Department.
Tuesday afternoon’s focus will shift to recovery and partnerships. The keynote speech on fair models of reducing substance use in people who threaten public safety will be presented by Dr. Keith Humphreys from Stanford University, and the ensuing panel will include experts from Alberta Health Services, EPS, The Policy Works, Delta Police Department and HelpSeeker Technologies.
Vulnerable populations and the homeless will be the focus on Wednesday, where Canadian Country Music songwriter and performer Paul Brandt will give a speech about the #NotInMyCity initiative to end human trafficking and sexual exploitation, and Anu George Canjanathoppil from the International Justice Mission will talk about Canada’s unique role in ending slavery.
The conference will now be held every two years in a different city.