Transit safety, gang shootings, international conflicts: Calgary police chief Mark Neufeld reflects on 2023

CTV News Morning Live anchor Jefferson Humphreys spoke to Calgary police chief Mark Neufeld recently about the state of the city's police service in 2023. The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q. What are the biggest challenges for you and the Calgary Police Service?

A. A couple of things really stood out (in) an interesting situation with crime in the city (in 2023). A lot of crime was trending down, but at the same time, I think people's perceptions of safety trended the other way. So I think perception is ultimately reality. (There's still) a lot of work to be done (communicating) with Calgarians around safety in public spaces.

Gun violence was a perpetual topic of discussion as well. And then I think a lot of work done just on things like call diversion and this type of thing -- the evolution of the crisis response model, we're working with partners to get the right resources to focus in this type of thing.

Those are probably three big pieces of working in 2023. And let's get into some of those and I guess starting with gun violence, certainly always raises people's attention.

Neufeld said shootings were actually down in Calgary about 25 per cent in 2023

Q. Seeing two gangs very much involved with each other and (shootings are) pinpointed to that? Are we seeing that right now?

A. One real underlying message around the (issue of) gun violence is that the Calgary Police Service is very sophisticated in response to gun violence. A lot of major cities are trending upward, and in Alberta, I think the numbers were 536 shootings at the end of October, which was about a 35 per cent increase in the province. And so in Calgary here, we've (actually) been able to buck that trend.

We have 95 shootings as of today. This time last year, we had 122. So we're down about 22 to 25 per cent.  Now, as much as that's a good news story, sort of at a high level when you look at the numbers, but the fact of the matter is, is we've got 95 humans in an urban area in the city, terribly brazen. They've been a terrible impact (on) communities, individuals, they also shatter people's sense of safety, and they also draw resources that are needed elsewhere.

So there's no joy when there's any (shootings) -- when one (shot fired) is one too many. It's something that we need to continue to work on. But I will tell you this. We have pretty good insight into what's happening around the city, I would say 25 per cent of these shootings are directly attributable to organized crime.

Q. How much more difficult is it to handle when you have these two or let’s say three very organized (crime) groups (shooting at each other)? What kind of extra challenge is that?

A. We have a lot of intelligence coming in. We also have our Violent Crime Suppression team -- those are frontline members who are actually going into locations and literally (putting) boots on the ground and (going in) to areas where (organized crime) members hang out.

The other thing that's really important for us as well, when it comes to this is our connectivity with other policing partners, whether it be the Lower Mainland (in Vancouver), or Toronto or Ontario. At the end of the day, some of these groups actually float between jurisdictions. They don't know boundaries. And so it's very important that we're talking with our partners (in other cities).

Calgary police chief Mark Neufeld in conversation with CTV News anchor Jefferson Humphreys

Q. Talk about transit safety initiatives

A. We heard loud and clear from Calgarians that they weren't feeling safe (on public transit).

That's a problem for all of us.

Everything that  happens, whether they're residents or visitors, is predicated on a feeling of safety. What happens when we have peace officers and police officers on transit (is that) you're engaging the people that are there and you find (out) pretty quickly that there's some people (who) are vulnerable and that's hard for uniformed members to be able to deal with that.

People keep coming back and you have information and you're struggling to retarget those people that (engage in) criminal behavior (and) predatory behavior, (and) to talk to other vulnerable Calgarians (to explain that it) isn't going to be tolerated in public spaces.

A brawl between several people at the Marlborough CTrain station saw one set on fire. A moment later, he was lit up again.

I think there was 27 people charged with criminal offences. A lot of those were trafficking, drug trafficking, drama.

But what we (also) see out there is people are carrying weapons. There's a long list of weapons that were seized during that operation and earlier once this year. And so that's where we express as sort of what's the current state of transit.

With our data, we can figure out which of the (transit) locations around the network need our attention, which needs the least attention which means transit peace officer attention and which might actually just need like ambassador or private security attention, so we can prioritize that way.

You'll know that the council just approved the transit safety strategy for going into 2024. And the province approved 50 new officers for the job recovery service. So our deployment of those officers in 2024 is going to be to augment that transit safety strategy for more boots on the ground, (and) more police attention on transit.

At the end of the day, what we're working at now is with the data that we've gathered from our activities this year, so just this year, I think officers issued about 3,500 violation tickets, executed about 5,600 warrants on transit and laid about 3,600 criminal charges as well.

Just with what we've done this year, we're starting to get an understanding as to who is who and why they're on that system. We’ve got a nuanced approach going into 2024. One of the things we'll focus on is what we're calling high systems users. So individuals who we know that we've dealt with, again around the transit network, and who need some sort of service and getting an individualized approach to hopefully get those people out the system and to deal with them before they cause a call for service or crisis. Because that's exactly the type of thing that's causing Calgarians to feel unsafe.

Let's switch gears another big story and 2023 was the sort of reality of international issues coming home. Obviously, for you to deal with the conflict in the Eritrean community was front and center and other international conflicts that you have to deal with.

What kind of challenge has that posed and what kind of challenge do you see going forward?

We have seen, as you say, an increase in in international conflicts actually certainly manifesting (themselves locally).

That just tells you that the world is smaller than it used to be in terms of in terms of public sort of functions and how (global) things play out (locally). Our officers have done a really good job of understanding very quickly where communities have been experiencing fear and grief and all the range of emotions for (a variety of) international conflicts.

We want to make sure that we can allow people to have their constitutional rights to go out and gather, but we bounce that off in ways that we probably didn't do as well in the past or in COVID against the impacts (such gatherings can have on the community).

The good news is we have very strong relationships with most of the communities. There are times where groups are more or less cooperative. I would say that when things (political rallies) get large, oftentimes they get fractured. Where you have to be part of the group is that is totally cooperative and part of the different ideas and so we went through those steps, but I think it has been a challenge for officers.

You mentioned the imagery and violence. That's another one we met with communities that have begun to understand that there, but we were very clear about our expectations, about what's going to happen. Probably notwithstanding the emotionality of the issues, I would I would sort of classify that one (Eritrean) as a riot more than a protest like that was escalated immediately to a place where there was violence that impacted Calgary business owners and people that were in the area in ways that just is not tolerable.

That can't happen.

Q. And then finally… when you look back on 2023. what will you look back at with a sense of pride? What's worked well?

Oh man.

I have to say I'm super proud of our members there. It has been a challenging year, obviously, with lots of work. It wants to have a community and hence the police service -- and our people have done a really good job when I think of just the amazing investigative work this drives through new techniques like investigated genetic genealogy.

At a high level is the way in which we have been able to successfully divert calls -- this has been an ongoing effort, but there's been a lot done in 2023. And we're to the point now, where through some of the initiatives that have been taken, we're probably down to 30 calls for service that would have otherwise gone to the boards of our officers to respond to.

What I'm hearing from officers as I go around now is that they have had more time to be proactive and actually, you know, to try to prevent crime, instead of responding to the calls for service. So I think excellent work has been done there. But all on the backs of members who've worked very hard this year, to protect and serve the community.

And now hopefully well, thank you so much as always for taking time with us monthly and for these check-ins.