Bell: In Calgary it's refunding the police not defunding the police
Calgary is getting 50 new cop positions and Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Services Mike Ellis tells us the dollars are permanent
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Where are they now?
Where are the loudmouths calling for the city cop budget to be cut with the cash to go to social workers and other groups claiming they can do a better job protecting us from the bad guys?
Where are the megaphones telling us the city cops are racist bad actors living a culture of violence and brutality, an outfit needing to be taken down a peg or two or more?
Where is the fashionable defund-the-police sloganeering of not so long ago, where fewer cops would, as if by some kind of hocus-pocus, result in less crime and fewer criminals?
Yes, if life was that simple.
Just hug a thug and the rainbows will appear in the sky and the unicorns will come out and play and all will be right with the world.
Seems not so long ago when Jeromy Farkas was a pull-no-punches councillor, a one-man battler against the city hall insiders.
Farkas was a city council representative on the Calgary police commission but he wouldn’t buy into the idea the very foundation by which policing was created was inherently racist.
The city hall politicians gave the thumbs-down to his reappointment to the body who oversees the city police.
“City council is playing with fire and it’s Calgarians getting burned,” said Farkas, who would not bend the knee at the altar of the self-appointed politically correct.
Fast forward and now we’re gathered at Calgary Police Service HQ Wednesday and Mike Ellis, the former city cop who is the province’s point man on law and order, announces the ink is dry on a $4 million-plus cheque.
Calgary is getting 50 new cop positions and Ellis tells us the dollars are permanent.
Ellis says cops are “the pointy end of the stick” and they are needed and they need to be supported.
Cops on the street matter. Those who prey on vulnerable citizens and cause chaos are not welcome.
High-crime areas will be targeted.
Ellis talks about the increase in crime and social disorder. We can see it.
Where once cops would say random, unprovoked attacks were rare “now it appears they occur almost every other day.”
“This will not be tolerated,” says Ellis.
Once, when Ellis was a Calgary cop, you would hear the victim of a crime was known to the offender.
Now …
“We are seeing more violent attacks on citizens just going about their daily lives.”
Loyal readers remember back in March when your scribbler and others in the press took a tour of the downtown with the cops and Ellis.
Let’s just say it wasn’t all shiny skyscrapers.
Your scribbler approached Staff Sgt. Lee Dunbar of the city police and asked him how many more cops were needed in the city core.
He figured 36 new positions on the police front line would make a big difference.
It was front-page news. The number 36. We asked the premier to show us the money.
Now there will be 50 new police positions for the city as a whole. It’s a start.
Mark Neufeld, Calgary’s top cop, talks about one woman.
A woman who is on transit and in the city’s core yelling, shoplifting, causing disturbances in and around restaurants, in liquor stores.
“At times her behaviour has escalated to points where she punched and threatened Calgarians she passed along the street,” says the Calgary police chief.
This woman has had hundreds of involvements with police to say nothing of encounters with EMS and transit and emergency rooms.
She has had dozens of matters before the court, going through the revolving door of what claims to be a justice system.
She has refused all offers of help.
These new police positions, and there will be more cops in all parts of the city, will focus on those committing crimes but also individuals, such as this woman, who have lots of contact with the system.
As for drugs, Neufeld is clear.
“There isn’t a path forward with the drug crisis that doesn’t actually involve the police,” says the city’s top cop.
For Ellis, seeing police out there matters.
The pendulum is swinging ever-so-slowly away from Cloud Cuckooland.
The police have a tough job but somebody’s got to do it and all the pie-in-the-sky navel gazers who think otherwise don’t change that fact.
The message of Ellis to the city police.
“You have my pledge Alberta’s government will continue its efforts to ensure you have the support and resources to carry out your work.”
We will hold the government of Premier Danielle Smith to that promise.
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