Lethbridge's Supervised Consumption Site

By Lara Fominoff

“Significant increase” in calls for service at SCS and surrounding area strain LPS resources

Sep 26, 2019 | 5:35 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – *UPDATED* In the first year of its operation, according to new numbers released by Lethbridge Police at Wednesday’s Police Commission meeting, calls for service at the city’s Supervised Consumption Site (SCS) and in the immediate area, have exploded.

Acting Chief Scott Woods says calls at 1016 1 Ave. S. went from seven between March 1, 2017 – Feb. 28, 2018 (Year Zero), to 424 in the period between March 1, 2018 and Feb. 28, 2019 (Year 1). That, according to the statistics, is a nearly 6000 per cent increase. It’s important to note however, that calls for service do not necessarily equate to potential criminal activity.

LPS Calls for Service

“That means when somebody calls the police, requesting police assistance we send out a patrol car or multiple patrol calls depending on what the incident is.”

In the area immediately surrounding the SCS, calls went from 289 in “Year Zero,” to 1023 in “Year One.” Slightly further out from the SCS in what’s described as the “Orange Zone”, the number of calls went from 7715 to 8199. In the “Yellow Zone” calls increased slightly, from 5556 to 5592. (See attached photo for coloured zones)

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For the City of Lethbridge overall however, the number of calls appears to have only increased by 52 calls. Woods says that small increase is consistent with a growing city, but also possible frustration with what he concedes can be a slower response time in some other parts of the city, depending on the priority and nature of the call. (see Chief’s answer below).

Coloured Zones as marked by LPS

It’s also important to note that the information gathered does not include the period after March 1, 2019. That information, according to Woods is still being gathered, and will be included in a “Year Two” projection. Calls, he adds come not only from the general public, local business owners, and others, but also from staff at the SCS itself.

According to the information released by police, the top five reasons for police response to the SCS itself included trespassing/unwanted persons at the facility, disturbances, driving under the influence, supplemental, and drug issues.

“The statistics are what they are, and we’re definitely a lot busier,” said Woods. “Definitely in that area, for sure. It’s a result of a number of things, but specifically to a lot of calls specific to that site, with people being banned, or disturbances, nuisances, those types of things, drug related offences. Anything from disturbance stuff that includes fights, public urination, those types of things. So, we’ve seen a significant increase in the amount of times we’re attending there.”

In the area immediately surrounding the SCS, the top five reasons for calls for service included trespassing, theft, disturbance, drugs, and suspicious/ wanted persons. Further out in the “orange zone,” police attended to calls for service to investigate trespassing, thefts, disturbances, public services and traffic complaints or hazards.

Top Five Reasons for Calls – LPS

And because police are so busy responding to calls in and around the 1 Ave. S. area, Woods says resources are becoming strained.

“Quite frankly, we’re in that area more, which means that we’re putting more resources into that area, which means that in other areas of the city for example, or even in that same area of the city, outside it – depending on the priority of what we’re dealing with, our response times will suffer. As a result, we can’t get to some things as quickly as we’d like to. Obviously we do things on a priority system, so some of the lower level stuff is waiting longer, which is leading to some frustrations from people in the community.”

He also says it’s a misconception that there is a “safe zone” around the site.

“That’s not true. The police…us, will arrest people for criminal activity around there, including drug possession and trafficking. The only exemption that the Federal Government has given is within that site specifically. So, criminal activity around that site is not something we’re turning a blind eye on.”

The new information is already six months old, which means newer statistics and numbers aren’t yet available. When asked why it took so long to release the detailed numbers for Year One, at first, Woods couldn’t say for sure.

“That’s a good question, and one I don’t have a specific answer for. That was initiated under Chief Davis. That was a project he was working on. We had released these previously to the city- I don’t have the date and time on that – which my understanding was, when there were some town halls, stuff with the Supervised Consumption Site, recently the city had those statistics available. So specific to the timeline, I don’t have an answer for you on that.”

When asked again during a media availability Thursday, Acting Chief Woods had more to say.

“We wanted to see over a period of time what we were dealing with. As far as the release of it? We had wanted to release this information in June at the Commission, but then when we looked at the report at the time there was a couple of other things that we wanted to do which delayed it. We had to go back and do a couple of other things. As you know, the Police Commission doesn’t sit through the summer months… so we had to bring it back forth in September, so that speaks to that piece of it.”

Woods explained that the information was also shared in recent weeks with City Council and with the Solictor General.

Lethbridge News Now could not immediately ask Mayor Chris Spearman about the timing of the information regarding calls for service to the SCS, and when the City was given the information. He did not attend Wednesday’s meeting. However, efforts will be made to contact the mayor regarding the timing of the information and for his reaction to the information released by police.

Several civilian members of the police commission asked Woods whether calls for service in “Year Two” might be reduced with the implementation of The Watch and Community Peace Officer program. He says it’s a possibility.

“They (CPOs) will eventually be out on their own here in the next couple of months responding to specific calls for that area, which they are trained on. And as time goes on, we’ll have to look at the data and see exactly what they’re doing, what types of calls for service. Is there a consistency in the type of calls we’re seeing? Is there certain ones more than others? Are we spending our time doing a lot more things than others? And we’ll look back and see if it’s had any impact on our regular officers and what they’re doing.”

In the meantime, Woods says his officers are feeling the strain with the increased number of calls. Changing their deployment models may be an option.

“From the standpoint of the police service, our people are starting to get tired, because we’ve been busy.”