Community Safety and Well-Being Update (July 2023)
Safety and security has been our top priority but I realize we haven't done a great job sharing what actions have been taken and the impact those actions are having until two months ago. Even when I do share information, I find there isn’t a lot of traction on those posts. I think the challenge is that there's not really an easy way to summarize complex topics like community safety and well-being. This post won’t try to summarize everything but it will try to connect you with important information that you can review over time.
I know it might not sound riveting to watch our council meetings but I did want to highlight and share a link to our council meeting from July 4th (start at the 1:21:30 mark in case the link doesn’t automatically take you there). As of May, we now receive monthly updates on community safety and well-being. These public updates allow City staff, EPS, and social organizations like Bent Arrow to provide us with updates on the work they are doing to help address safety concerns across Edmonton.
Asking you to watch a council meeting is not ideal as they can be long. Yet, I think it’s the best way to understand the work that is happening and how seriously this is being taken. To help with this, you don't have to watch most of the video and can instead just listen to it like you would a podcast.
I'm also going to share two other links that provide additional important information. This link will take you to a dedicated page on the City website about the various actions we are taking to help address safety and security. The other link is to our Community Safety and Well-being Dashboard which tracks a number of measures on a variety of important issues.
One other ask is that you take the time to review this post from May. While I hope you read the entire post, I want to highlight some of the actions we have taken to help address safety and security. The following list comes from Mayor Sohi’s blog in April which you can read here:
In 2022, Council approved the Transit Safety Plan, as well as presented the Government of Alberta with the Downtown Core and Transit System Safety Plan, and we added an additional $13.5 million to transit safety resources through budget 2023.
The City has hired a Director of Transit Safety to lead this work. They are bringing people and skills together.
We have also hired an additional transit security dispatcher to support the Transit Watch program and oversee the surveillance cameras in use across the system.
We continue to increase the presence of security, peace officers, and community outreach workers as well. This work is ensuring that we have the right people in the right place at the right time. We have added more Transit Peace Officers and are currently recruiting more.
We will have over 110 staff members within our Transit Peace Officer teams by this fall, including frontline officers, sergeants and management. This is nearly 20% growth and seeing 20 more Transit Peace Officers in transit spaces.
Other supports, like the Community Outreach Transit Team — a partnership between the City and Bent Arrow Traditional Healing Society, have doubled over the same period. These teams are made up of 1 Transit Peace Officer and 1 social outreach worker.
Ongoing, sustainable funding was approved for the Community Outreach Transit Team with five teams currently operational, and once fully staffed, COTT will have seven teams.
We have also invested in safety in the core of the city, including $15.2 million for the Healthy Streets Operations Centre which will bring 48 new constables and 6 new sergeants to Chinatown, as well as 4 Peace Officer Sergeants and 14 Community Peace Officers.
In 2023, the EPS budget has increased by an additional $7 million.
We have also increased the hours of service for security guards in some of our locations, and mobile drug poisoning prevention teams have been engaged for LRT stations through a community health partnership.
Beyond this, the provincial government is returning the policing funding that they previously reduced a few years ago to hire 50 new Edmonton Police Officers who will be focused on transit safety and security. This is in addition to the 18 officers who have already been deployed to focus on transit safety and security.
Fortunately, as you will hear in the council meeting, we are starting to see positive progress in the city. Crime severity in our downtown is dropping and there has been a reduction in incidents on the transit system thanks to the work happening. The coordination between EPS, the Transit Peace Officers, the security guards, and other social agencies is critical to properly addressing safety and security.
Beyond that, you might have seen a story earlier in July about the Mayor's letter to the Federal Government to fully implement the Federal Bill on bail reform. The post from May that I shared has some more specific numbers about the need for bail reform and hopefully that work happens quickly because as you can see in that post, there are people with long criminal records who are being let out when they shouldn't be. That bill alone won't solve everything but it will make a big difference for our police.
I know how important this work is. If people aren’t safe or if they don’t feel safe, it’s hard to think about anything else. I will continue to share information from our monthly updates so that you can better understand the important work that is happening and the results we are seeing. If you have any specific suggestions about how to better communicate information around this complex topic, please share those ideas in the comments.
