Red Deer is ahead of the game in coordinating peace officers and RCMP

According to the Alberta Substance Use Surveillance System: in 2022, Red Deer saw 45 drug poisoning deaths from non-pharmaceutical opioids (including fentanyl and its analogues, heroine and designer opiates) and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) responded to 200 opioid-related events. In 2023 the number of deaths rose to 52 and EMS responses to 242. For 2024, overdose data is only available up to the month of October, and the count of deaths sits at 23. EMS response data is available up to September and shows 125 responses.

John Ferguson, Red Deer’s manager of municipal police services, said the city already strategically aligns its peace officers and police and won’t need to make tangible changes to meet this request.

“In Red Deer, our structures and processes are already designed around providing the most support that we can to our police service,” he said. “We have a dispatch centre in the detachment here, so when someone calls in for service our folks in the call centre will determine: this is a call that a peace officer could go to, or, this is a call that a peace officer doesn’t have the authority to respond to, so we have to send a police officer. That triage is already being done.”

By sending peace officers to calls within their authority rather than defaulting to police, Ferguson said RCMP members, theoretically, become freed up to tackle more serious issues such as drug trafficking. He added that triaging can be more cost efficient as well, as sending a CPO is more affordable than a fully trained RCMP officer.

Ferguson was clear that the announcement did not give any new or increased authorities to CPO’s, as the province has the authority to do in appropriate situations.

For example, Red Deer already has two CPO’s assigned to an RCMP Downtown Patrol Unit who report to RCMP for their day-to-day tasks and have received additional authority from the province to aid in their work. Specifically, they have the ability to to arrest and/or charge people for Criminal Code offences such as mischief and theft under $1,000.

These additional authorities require time and resources to enact as eligible peace officers need to receive extra training.

Normally, peace officers enforce municipal bylaws and the Alberta Traffic Safety Act. CPO’s are also employed and funded by municipalities, although the province outlines their training standards, Ferguson explained.

Red Deer currently employs 22 CPO’s and is in the process of hiring four more for a dedicated Traffic Unit.

Green clarified that communities with CPO programs were strongly encouraged to participate but ultimately, it was a local decision. Communities were not mandated to participate and there are no consequences if they don’t, he said.

The participating communities are:

Airdrie
Brooks
Calgary
Camrose
Canmore
Chestermere
Cochrane
Cold Lake
Drayton Valley
Edmonton
Fort Saskatchewan
Grande Prairie
High River
Hinton
Innisfail
Lacombe
Leduc
Lethbridge
Lloydminster
Medicine Hat
Okotoks
Ponoka
Red Deer
Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo
Rocky Mountain House
Spruce Grove
St. Albert
Stony Plain
Strathcona County
Strathmore
Sylvan Lake
Wetaskiwin
Whitecourt

by Ashley Lavallee-Koenig

Red Deer is ahead of the game in coordinating peace officers and RCMP

What's Trending