Gun crime tops police chief's hit list in 2021
Firearms incidents up in '20, but fewer in organized crime
A priority for Calgary police in 2021 will be to curb gun violence after an increase last year, Chief Mark Neufeld said during a yearend interview.
After taking the reins of the Calgary Police Service in mid-2019, Neufeld committed to a goal of reducing gun crime in Calgary, promising a new strategy focused on the issue.
But shootings in 2020 actually outpaced those from 2019, with 103 recorded by the end of November — up from 89 for all of 2019.
Neufeld said those statistics don't reflect that Calgary police have had success in driving down the number of shootings associated with organized crime.
“Those numbers are persistently high. What we're seeing there is that there's some lower-level criminals and people in the city that are involved in the drug trade carrying guns that never used to,” he said.
“We heard some stuff (in 2020) that there was individuals who said they'd sooner be caught by the police with a gun than be caught by their rivals without one. So that's not good.”
Violent crime and homicides in Calgary are also up. The police service had investigated 33 killings as homicides as of late December, compared with 21 in 2019. The chief said the drivers behind those numbers are “hard to pick out,” but investigators believe gangs and organized crime are “surprisingly” not to blame.
“I think it just chalks up to this being a year like no other,” he said.
Increased gun crime is “not necessarily a Calgary problem,” he noted, with Edmonton and other western Canadian cities also experiencing high numbers.
He said the strategy put in place in 2020 by city police “was actually fairly comprehensive.”
“One might think eventually that it would live in the investigative area — conducting good investigations of the shootings after they happen,” Neufeld said.
“But the point is not to let them happen. The point is to try to intervene before they happen. Certainly on the patrol side, there was a lot of work around suppression in our gang unit, dealing with offenders or people we knew who were involved in that sort of lifestyle, proactively.”
Education is also a big piece of the puzzle. But Neufeld said officers' work in the community was “heavily curtailed” last year because of the pandemic. It eventually got back on track, albeit virtually, through programs such as Youthlink, which attempts to educate Calgary families and youths through crime-prevention and community-policing techniques.
“I think we have seen some gains,” Neufeld said.
“In the last two years, we had numbers as high as six in 10 shootings in Calgary could be linked back to organized crime. This year, the last number I saw was about 16 per cent, so less than two in 10. But that's in the context of the overall number of shootings have gone up, so I think it's indicative of a different driver.”
PANDEMIC, OPIOID CRISIS TAKING TOLL
Neufeld described 2020 as a challenging year for Calgary police, with constant adjustments needed as the COVID-19 crisis swept the city.
Widespread restrictions affected the city's crime trends. The chief said he fears the effect will carry over to 2021, especially with daily COVID-19 case figures still trending much higher than they did during the first wave.
“I am concerned about the mental-health hangover of the pandemic, whenever it ends,” Neufeld said.
“We're feeling all now like there's a light at the end of the tunnel, but COVID-19 will still be with us for a while into 2021 and we'll have to continue to manage those impacts and support Calgarians and our own police service through that.”
Calgary police commission chair Bonita Croft said the civilian oversight body is proud of how the force “stepped up” as it faced new challenges in 2020.
“Nobody could have predicted what has happened with COVID-19 during the past year,” she said.
“The Calgary Police Service, more than most of us, have had to pivot while adapting to what it needed to do differently during the pandemic … while taking on even more risks to themselves and risks to their own families.”
A second health crisis also plagued the city last year, as opioid overdoses continued to increase. In Calgary, there were 311 opioid-overdose deaths by the end of October, up from 231 in all of 2019.
July was the worst month for opioid-related deaths in the city, with 50. Similar trends have been observed across Alberta.
“We've seen the increase,” Neufeld said.
“It's been very difficult for people who've been struggling with addictions in 2020. Not only has it been a really tough year in terms of certainty around jobs and general anxiety, but people who are struggling with addictions haven't been able to necessarily access the services that they would ordinarily access the same way.” He said the biggest impact on crime has been a rise in pharmacy robberies, including armed thefts of pharmaceuticals.
“I think that supply of opioids for folks has probably been somewhat diminished as a result of the pandemic and the ability to get drugs in from other countries,” Neufeld said.
“As a result of that, we're seeing people resort to robbing pharmacies to get their hands on them.”
MORE FINES FOR HEALTH ORDER VIOLATIONS
Calgary police have faced criticism for their handling of enforcement at weekly downtown rallies against mandatory masking and other public health orders.
Calgary police initially committed to “education” of the public of the rules rather than widespread ticketing, but has adjusted its approach in recent weeks as hundreds of protesters continue to gather illegally each weekend at city hall.
As of Dec. 30, Calgary police and city peace officers had issued 69 tickets under Alberta's Public Health Act after the province imposed restrictions on social gatherings on Nov. 24.
Eighty per cent of those fines were issued since Dec. 17.
Officers also issued 67 tickets for failure to wear a mask where required since the city's face-covering bylaw took effect in August. Twenty-six of those tickets were issued since Dec. 17.
“You're talking about a group of people that are not going to be educated because they've got their mind made up about the fact that these health-care restrictions are unconstitutional or illegal,” Neufeld said of the anti-mask protesters.
“We've targeted the organizers of those groups that are bringing people together because we want to get some of those charges before the courts. It would be great to see some convictions for these sorts of things to be able to reinforce to people that, no, these health orders are a reasonable limit placed on your constitutional rights because of a global health crisis.”
Some have alleged there is a “double standard” in police enforcement of those rules, after 67 Calgarians were fined for “stunting” during a vehicle procession rally held in solidarity with Indian farmer protests, which aimed to respect public-health orders.
Neufeld said officers simply can't ticket every person at an anti-mask protest because “there's only a certain amount of capacity in the system.”
“There's only a certain number of people we can certainly send to court after every weekend,” he said.
“We really hope that the messaging and targeted enforcement in the beginning might actually help bring down the numbers. But, certainly, I can tell you we will be stepping up enforcement as we go. This is not the time for education and there needs to be more enforcement.”