Cops at the core

Seeing Calgary’s downtown through police eyes

Originally published September 20, 2007 in FFWD by Drew Anderson in City


On September 10, Calgary city council unanimously approved a motion by Mayor Dave Bronconnier that called for an increased police presence in the downtown core and Beltline. His plan, which still must go through budget negotiations, would see 25 new bylaw officers, 10 new police officers and possibly closed-circuit cameras on the downtown beat — known as District One to the police that call this area their workplace.

Riding through the darkened streets of the district with Constables Gord Denison and Roland Stewart is like looking at your city through a television camera. The streets you ride on, walk past or drive by seem a little more menacing through the perceptive eyes of the police.

Police maintain a fine balance, acting as punishers and guardians, disciplinarians and social workers, a balance played out in every individual encounter and at the discretion of the officers. Sometimes that discretion is good, and sometimes it’s bad.

Before the van even leaves the alley behind police headquarters on Sixth Ave. and First St. S.E., a call comes over the radio about an assault — something about pepper spray. In less than 10 minutes the van pulls into an alley behind the bottle depot on Ninth Ave. S.E. in Inglewood and finds a distraught man, with a sore face, angrily moving shopping carts around. In a turf dispute, he has trespassed from his alley home into a nearby yard and gotten dosed for it.

Crime rates have been dropping across Canada for a few years now and Calgary is no different. According to Statistics Canada, the national crime rate hit a 25-year low in 2006, largely due to a drop in non-violent crime. Alberta witnessed one of the largest drops in the country at five per cent from 2005. Total drug crimes across the country increased by two per cent.

Steward and Denison have a keen eye and a deep understanding of what happens — who knows who and what looks out of the ordinary — on streets where everything appears to fit that description.

A suspicious car passes the paddy wagon on a seedy stretch of 14th Ave. Just east of Fourth St., Steward notices a passenger not wearing a shirt, unusual given the low-teen temperature on this late-summer night. After a quick U-turn, the van is speeding down the narrow street to find the vehicle, now pulled over and with its occupants hunching below the head rests. Soon, the trunk of the police car is littered with the tools of the trade: a homemade crack pipe, butane, bent spoons, needles, a car antennae (perfect as a whipping weapon) and an empty Tylenol container — a typical haul for the area according to the officers.

There are no actual drugs, and after issuing some tickets to the occupants, they are let allowed to drive away, only to be stopped a few blocks later when the car is reported stolen. Apparently the driver’s sister is not as generous as the man led officers to believe.

“It’s frustrating,” says Denison at the end of the night. “The courts don’t take the drugs seriously.” Both partners agree that the revolving door they see operate between the street and the courts is the least enjoyable part of their job.

At the Calgary Remand Centre, issues of overcrowding are putting a strain on the justice system. Recently, a man convicted of sexual assault of a minor was released upon sentencing after his time served in remand was measured as three times the length it would be in a regular prison. The credit was based on the overcrowded conditions of the centre, where three men are often crammed into rooms designed for two. Based on this calculation, the man had already surpassed his sentence.

This isn’t the only place in the city with a space crunch. At 11:30 p.m., the Calgary Drop-In Centre is at capacity, with men sleeping shoulder to shoulder on makeshift mattresses on the floor. The officers are there to wake up a man missing from the Rockyview General Hospital psychiatric ward; they say to stay close. There are people out front, waiting for a bed, sleeping on the ground. A man shivers on the concrete, but it’s impossible to tell if it’s because of the air temperature.

Halfway to the hospital, the officers are told the psychiatric patient has actually been discharged and it’s back to the Drop-In Centre, where his bed is, luckily, still available.

After a spate of violence in August, and with a civic election campaign right around the corner, crime has become a major issue in the city and, therefore, local politics. A new police chief, Rick Hanson, was named on September 10, coinciding with the approval of the new bylaw and police officers.

Spending four hours with Constables Steward and Denison, there are no arrests, no handcuffs, no fights, no serious crimes; their job almost seems like a dangerous, beefed-up, gun-toting hall patrol. Both men say their primary job is driving around and looking for stuff, keeping an eye out in case something does happen or a suspicious car drives by.

“Where are we supposed to put these guys?” asks Denison after calming the early evening turf war in the Inglewood alley, reflecting a general frustration with the city’s homelessness problem and an inability to stamp out crime. Whether it is in the downtown, the Beltline, Ramsay or Inglewood, the officers agree they are just pushing the problem from one area to another and back again.