Photo Courtesy Brendan Miller

By Brendan Miller

Recent fentanyl bust spotlights work by local police

Feb 16, 2023 | 5:32 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – On a frigid January morning, a lone Medicine Hat police officer on patrol pulls over a vehicle. Due to the unknown risk, the officer approaches with caution.

Drawing from years of training and experience the officer soon realizes this was no run-of-the-mill traffic stop.

Inside the vehicle, almost $600,000 of fentanyl was discovered, along with three firearms. It was the largest single seizure of drugs in Medicine Hat to date.

The fentanyl bust on Jan. 28 underlines the perils officers face every day they put on the uniform.

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Insp. Joe West with the Medicine Hat Police Service says officers prepare and train to deal with these kinds of situations at a moment’s notice.

“I can tell you that pulling those vehicles over and conducting traffic stops and those field investigations in this case came up with a large amount of fentanyl and some firearms,” said West.

“That’s a regular part of the day in day out duties of our police officers.”

Thousands of deadly fentanyl doses were removed from city streets that day.

On average, MHPS receives 30,000 calls for service every year, and many calls create uncertainty for the responding officer.

“One of our core values is courage and certainly sometimes courage is simply doing something that even though there is a level of fear, you go ahead and do it anyways,” said West.

Officers routinely face situations where split-second decisions can be the difference between life and death.

The dangers of policing are highlighted this year by the tragic deaths of at least five police officers killed in the line of duty across Canada.

“Certainly that risk is always there and we’ve seen tragedies very unfortunately play out across the country,” said West.

Most calls don’t end in arrests or charges. Instead members of the police work to solve problems in the community.

“They are there to keep the peace, they are there to provide calming to the situation until it can get dealt with long term and other means and they become quite good at that sort of crisis type of response,” said West.

Despite all the dangers police officers encounter, their bravery continues to make our community a safer place to live, one call at a time.