Reimagining Community Safety in Edmonton

Today City Council completed its debate on our comprehensive motion regarding the Edmonton Police Commission.

I want to recognize the spectrum of perspectives has led us to today’s final outcome. There’s no doubt that whether you’re a member of the police service, family of a member of the police service, the police commission or member of the community that shared their experiences (good and bad) with police — it’s been an emotional journey these past few weeks.

I want to recognize that everyone’s opinions did help shape the positive changes ahead. No system is perfect and in the spirit of continuous improvement, we had to get to changes that would lead to system improvements without forgetting that police still play an important role, today, in our community alongside many others partners dedicated to community safety.

As I mentioned last week, this motion, which passed today, is the first step in ensuring the City of Edmonton builds a more just and fair community safety model, that looks past traditional policing and to a more holistic approach to community safety.

This holistic approach includes prevention and community safety initiatives, such as more permanent supportive housing (to help end homelessness in our City), and gives the City more direction to further invest in the human services and social safety net ecosystems in Edmonton.

We’ll be using $11 million dollars from the police budget to do that work, and our hope is that this reallocation of funds will allow us to better serve folks made vulnerable by “cracks in the system”.

It also allows us to launch a Community Safety Task Force. This task force is one of the most impactful developments of this motion as it gives the community more direct oversight and say in the evolution of community safety in Edmonton. This task force would provide council with funding suggestions and policy changes that go beyond what we discussed in today’s motion.

This non-partisan task force would also review “divest” and “defund” trends and policing change models and review practices that have an impact on reducing racism, discrimination, excessive force.

They would also provide a plan that would allow us to better integrate social services currently offered by the City of Edmonton (and our partners) with the Edmonton Police response so that we’re ensuring the right, and appropriate, resources are sent when a 911 call is placed.

As we’ve heard time and time again in the public hearings, folks have already been doing their own part to keep their communities safe — this task force would have the resources and council’s authority to help build on that community development and community based work.

Many of the justice system concerns we heard about during the public hearings, fall into the provincial government’s hands. This motion gives me direction to advocate, on behalf of Council, to the Solicitor General regarding the province’s Police Act review and ask for:
– An independent oversight mechanism like ASIRT be given the mandate for handling all public complaints about police conduct (so police aren’t investigating themselves).
– Better accountability for Transit Police Officers and Peace Officers
– Clarification on “carding” policy EPS follows, and have the provincial government clarify provincial laws around the “carding policy” — which we’ve heard from members of the public there are significant concerns about.

The motion is quite extensive, but overall I feel like it does a serviceable job of addressing communities’ concerns by outlining how we will further build and fortify our community safety models beyond the Edmonton Police Service and outlines how we’ll keep Police more accountable to community.

This work would not have been made possible without Edmontonians generously sharing their stories, perspectives, and research with us throughout the public hearings. I know it wasn’t easy — I’m sure it was difficult being so vulnerable and open in a public forum. So I want to take a moment to thank the speakers and those who took the time to send us an unprecedented amount of correspondence over these last few weeks.

I also want to thank council staff, police, and the police commission who took part in these public hearings and made this work possible.

I want to stress that the work doesn’t end here — this is just the beginning, and our future looks very bright as a result of these Edmontonians who put themselves on the line to ensure their communities and future generations live in a more just and equitable society.