Edmonton police union official slams Chief McFee: 'Your membership isn’t happy'

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A column from the vice-president of Edmonton’s city police union is offering a glimpse of what he describes as rank-and-file frustration with police Chief Dale McFee’s leadership.

In the Edmonton Police Association’s June newsletter, Det. Cory Kerr addressed what he said was a morale crisis within the Edmonton Police Service, which he says will require “massive change” to fix.

“Chief McFee — your members are tired and overworked,” he wrote. “They have had enough.”

“They are tired of doing more with less,” he said.

“They are tired of a new system being dropped on them before summer which will increase their workload. They are tired of the constant and never-ending change in your organization.”

“They are tired of nepotism. Enough is enough. They are tired and they want to be heard.”

The letter, which was first reported by The Tyee, is one of the strongest internal criticisms thus far of McFee’s term as chief.

McFee was sworn in as Edmonton’s 23rd police chief in February 2019 following a stint as chief of police in Prince Albert, Sask. He also served as Saskatchewan’s deputy minister of corrections and policing.

He replaced Rod Knecht, whose relationship with the police association was more outwardly contentious, with one union president accusing him of creating a “culture of fear” with his application of disciplinary rules.

Kerr described a relationship that has become similarly strained. He highlighted troubles retaining officers (“I have people coming to me at 10 and 15 years of service asking me how they can retire early”), the reassignment of provincial sheriffs to help curb downtown crime and disorder (“having sheriffs invade our work areas is just the beginning”), and the creation of an internal harassment investigations unit “so woefully understaffed that harassment investigations have drug on for years.”

“One thing is very clear to me — the service is failing its membership at multiple levels, and there needs to be change,” Kerr wrote. “Massive change. That change needs to start immediately, and it needs to come from the top.”

Addressing EPS’s senior leadership, he wrote: “Your membership isn’t happy with the way you are running things.”

Kerr declined to comment.

The newsletter’s “Cheers and Jeers” section offered similar criticisms. It accused the service of engaging in “cronyism from the top,” saying officers “are disgusted by it and would rather see people provided positions based on merit, not because of who you know.”

It also accused leadership of “trying once again to create civilian roles that should be filled by police officers,” and criticized the human resources department of failing to conduct adequate exit interviews when officers quit.

“Members are resigning at an alarming rate, and no one is giving them two minutes of their time to ask why?”

Another article in the newsletter, from director Alex Shaw, said 97 officers retired or resigned in 2022, while just 96 were hired.

Edmonton Police Association president Curtis Hoople declined to comment on Kerr’s column, but echoed calls for an employee engagement survey to gauge areas of discontent.

“The members are ready to provide their insights on what they are experiencing and what they need from their service and command team,” he said.

In a statement, an EPS spokesperson said the chief and the association have “an ongoing, frank and productive relationship with the EPA” and that steps are being taken “to better support our people.”

The statement said the EPS executive is “acutely aware of the pressures on our front lines” and frequently raises the issue with city officials.

“There is no question our officers have been under extraordinary, extended pressure after COVID and now in the midst of an addiction crisis, a bail reform crisis and a spike in violence across our city,” the service said. “As much as we honour the fact that our officers continue to rise to these moments, we are also mindful that resources are stretched too thin right now and that the needs of our community are only growing.”

‘Keeps me up at night’

In a news conference earlier this month, McFee addressed burnout within the service, attributing it to rising crime, repeated social disorder calls, and public criticism of police.

“What keeps me up at night is recruiting and trying to find enough people to actually do the job to the effective standards that we want,” McFee said.

When McFee was hired by the Edmonton Police Commission in 2018, he was touted as an innovative policing leader able to deliver on the city’s goals of improving diversity in policing, as well as diverting people with mental health and addictions issues to the health care sector rather than the justice system.

McFee’s term has been dominated by the local fallout from the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the ensuing police funding debates with city council (which reduced EPS’s budget increase by $11 million in 2020), and a rise in crime and disorder in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

On the funding front, the Edmonton Police Commission faced criticism for hiring the Community Safety Knowledge Alliance, a non-profit of which McFee is the president, to conduct a review of police funding.

The report found that while Edmonton pays more per capita for policing than any of the other six Canadian cities reviewed, the city was receiving good value for money. The report advocated for a return to a funding formula, which would see the service receive predictable funding increases without having to make the case directly to city council. Council will vote later this month on whether to reinstate the funding formula, which was scrapped in 2020. 

McFee’s contract was renewed two years ago through 2026. His salary of $340,000 was first made public last year.

The EPA, meanwhile, received a seven per cent retroactive raise in arbitration earlier this summer, after being without a contract for three years.