Interview with the Man

A couple of weeks ago I had a chat with Insp. Bob Ritchie. He’s the Calgary Police officer in charge of Division One – the downtown core. It took a little bit to set up the phone interview, but it’s not that hard. The Calgary Police are pretty good about disseminating information, but they’re busy as hell and it takes a little time to get to you – especially if they haven’t a clue what you’re on about.

First thing I wanted to know was if there was a proactive program for homelessness or the mentally ill on the street.

“If it’s a police matter then its reactive policing,” he asserted, “We have no proactive policing. When all other sources become not available, it is a police problem.”

Well, that answers that question. About homelessness:

“It requires a multilayered approach,” he said, “It requires the medical community, judicial, social agencies, politicians and emergency services.

“Policing is a last resort,” he continued, “sometimes a criminal element is present, but not always.

“You see, the homeless are forced into criminal or bylaw issues. The boom is increasing our problems. There’s an increased working poor population.”

(In case you’ve just tuned into the planet, Calgary is sitting on huge reserves of oil and overnight exploded with work and people pouring in from all over the world. This is the biggest boom Calgary has ever seen -- and it’s seen some whoppers in the past.)

“We’re very cognizant of this,” he explained, “We have to maintain good working relationships with the community.”

He mentioned various groups: CUPS, Alpha, DOAP, (Downtown Outreach Addictions Partnership), He said they rely heavily on social partnerships and the health care community, which makes sense. I mean, if the police didn’t cooperate with health and emergency services, we’d be totally up the creek without a paddle. He said there are lots of other organizations and apologized for not mentioning all of them. I told him not to worry about it, I can Google them.

One thing of note he mentioned. The judicial system in the past two years has developed a mental health diversion program. It goes like this: if officers in a criminal investigation find themselves in a mental health situation, and under the Mental Health Act, they can actually decide what constitutes a mental health situation; they can refer to the courts to track them instead of it resulting in a criminal conviction. They can refer the matter to a mental health situation, the court steps in and tracks the person arrested, and the person can get some help. It’s a hell of a way to get help, but at least it’s something.

He also mentioned that the police have psychiatrists on staff. He said they don’t go out into the community or anything, but they do have shrinks on staff. That may come in handy.

I was on the National Task Force for Resourcing for the RCMP for a number of years and we had to mathematically model, in considerable detail, the way policing works. I can tell you in no uncertain terms, that if you’re just into reactive policing with no proactive plans in place, you are playing catch-up ball. It’s a loser’s game. If you start winning, they move the goalposts and you have to work twice as hard just to stay even.

So there you have it. We’re putting out fires like crazy and it can only get worse. Time to head over to the library and check out some numbers. Just how big is this problem anyway?