Calgary needs police station downtown, councillor says

A city councillor says he’s concerned downtown residents and businesses will be left without a police station as a result of costcutting.

Inner-city Coun. Evan Woolley said Calgary will be one of the few major cities in the country without a police station serving its downtown when the Victoria Park station closes Saturday.

Woolley said he’s also concerned community members will have to go to neighbouring Ramsay, or more than 40 blocks south to Chinook Mall, to report a crime at a police station in-person.

“We need to have a police presence, a physical presence in the downtown,” Woolley said.

“This is about access. You have an immensely dense population living in a neighbourhood with no police presence (and) the distance they’re going to need to go to get to a police station seems like a long ways.”

Calgary police announced this week its Victoria Park facility will close, and resources belonging to the downtown beat units and the mountain bike teams will be folded into the District 1 office on 26th Avenue S.E. in Ramsay.

Starting Sunday, people who wish to report a crime in-person will have to travel to the District 1 station or the Chinook Centre community station.

But the police service said there will still be a “highly visible” police presence in the downtown consisting of a mobile station, starting in December during weekday business hours.

“We want to assure the public there will be no decrease in the level of policing service downtown and we will continue to have a highvisibility presence,” police said in a statement.

Calgary police also told Postmedia that Victoria Park station is one of the least-busy locations, receiving an average of 17,000 visits each year, which is “significantly less than other district offices.”

Woolley said the closure comes at a particularly inopportune time, with the heightened concern surrounding the recent opening of a temporary supervised consumption site in the Beltline and citizen surveys that suggest Calgarians are worried about safety in the core.

“We haven’t adequately ad- dressed the concerns of businesses and residents,” Woolley said. “We need to work closely with the community and with the residents and the (community associations) and the business community to ensure that (police) presence is there.”

Victoria Park Business Improvement Area executive director David Low said he understands the financial burden involved in the maintenance of a station, adding he hoped the cost savings would translate to more officers on the ground.

“Having the police station provided a lot of psychological comfort,” Low said. “We’re sad to see it go and look forward to working with CPS in whatever sort of future arrangements we can make.”

The closure comes more than a year after Calgary police closed community stations in Braeside and Riverbend, citing budgetary pressures.

You have an immensely dense population living in a neighbourhood with no police presence.