Calgary police chief talks drugs, officer-involved shootings and bullying in year-end interview
Roger Chaffin says police service reorganizing its resources to address changing demands on officers
It's been a stormy year for Calgary Police Service Chief Roger Chaffin, who has had to deal with police scandals, more officer-involved shootings than any other Canadian city and the continuation of the fentanyl crisis that has extensive implications in other areas of crime.
Doug Dirks of CBC Radio's The Homestretch interviewed the city's top cop to reflect on the year in policing and look ahead to his priorities in 2017.
The following is a condensed version of the interview.
Q: What do you plan to do about the city's escalating rate of property crime?
Drugs in this city and fentanyl, particularly, are really closely tied to this big increase in shop break and enters, house break and enters, robberies, theft of vehicles, etc. It's left us to come up with a new crime reduction strategy that we're employing right away.
The challenge for us is that we're not getting any bigger and the intensity of crime is getting higher so we're trying to find new, innovative ways to address these problems. We're restructuring the service, repurposing people, making sure that we're targeting the right kind of people, that we're looking at our prolific offenders.
Solve rates are pretty important to us. I've had my house broken into and the likelihood of finding people given the volume of these things is relatively low. But one nice thing about these things is that when we do get onto the right people we generally find them responsible for many, many of these break and enters.
Q: Regarding vehicle thefts: as you look at restructuring the force, how does that stretch your resources?
We are incredibly stretched but we look at the economics of this province and the city right now; we're 2,800 men and women — sworn and civilian employees — it's really the case of reorganizing ourselves around this so we can meet the demands. That means some traditional work is not getting done.
Stolen vehicles is really foundational to a lot of the crimes being committed in the city; people steal cars to break into houses, people steal cars to sell for drugs. So that's one of our big feature pieces is managing the prolific offenders and the stolen vehicles.
Q: Last year you said gang violence and the fentanyl crisis were top priorities. How do you feel about the progress you've made on these issues?
The fentanyl issue is probably the bigger one right now. The most frustrating part is it's not something police can do on their own.
I think we've done a pretty good job tracking source supply and dealers but our biggest problem, without a doubt, is the demand side — the amount of addicts in the city and the amount of treatments they're going to need, services they need to break that cycle of addiction so they're not committing crimes.
So our biggest (goal) still is trying to get a fulsome provincial strategy on this that everybody is working towards.
I think we've done quite a bit of work on our reorganization and our intelligence model to focus on that gang problem. We've done a lot of work targeting the right kind of people, getting them arrested and behind bars.
We've seen a real lowering of the gang problem. It's not like it's gone away but the intensity to which we were experiencing it last year has diminished.
Q: There were 10 officer-involved shootings in Calgary this year, more than any other city in Canada. How do you account for this?
All the things I just talked about have a connection to this; the motivation for crime, the motivation of criminals, the presence of these wildly addictive drugs like methamphetamine and fentanyl has changed the tenor and tempo of crime in the city.
Each one of those situations is dramatically difficult for the community. But we have to recognize that each one of those situations has put our officers into a critical situation. So we're going to do quite a bit of work next year to make sure that we are looking at new ways of deploying to keep our officers and the public safer.
Q: We heard a lot this year about the culture of workplace bullying and harassment within CPS. You committed to "redirecting the ship." What progress have you made?
We laid out a seven-point plan under the direction of the commission and 14-point action plan the service will commit to over the early part of 2017 to start taking some of those steps. Culture doesn't change overnight. We have to appreciate that programs by themselves don't do enough, you have to persist with them over time.
Q: What's your top priority in 2017?
The public and officer safety issues — making sure that we're presenting a policing model that is keeping people safe across the spectrum.