Lethbridge police have cleaned up nearly 100 encampments in 13 days of enforcement so far this year. Sergeant Ryan Darroch is in charge of the downtown policing unit — he says a new encampment response strategy approved by council last month has eliminated long-term, entrenched encampments and he has been involved in about 91 cleanups so far this year.
“So far this year it has been quite seamless when we attend with Clean Sweep partners and Streets Alive, people are very quick to pick up their stuff, they are compliant. I would say our biggest challenge that I have is the garbage that’s left behind and that’s what I’m continually hearing from the community,” he says, adding he believes there would be fewer complaints about encampments in the community if not for the litter left behind by people.
Each encampment cleanup, according to Darroch, involves between one and five people. He says the presence of structures is what defines an encampment. The city says since adopting its new encampment response strategy, it has received 45 reports of encampments from the community that have result in 12 responses involving police.
The new strategy uses a tier system for responses, with the first involving the Clean Sweep program and city administration, the second including social services and outreach and the third tier involving police.
General manager of community and social development for the city Andrew Malcolm says the goal of the strategy is to prevent encampments from becoming large and entrenched.
READ MORE: City approves new encampment response strategy
“What we did see with entrenched encampments is the high degree of biohazard and basically unsafe living and so that allows us to get those people into different situations where they are not potentially living in and around biohazards,” he said. “It also allows us to prevent behaviours of territoriality where they become defensive of space — again it is not ideal that we are in many instances moving them around the community but it does get them out of those situations which are unsafe from them.”
Lethbridge police provided an update to city council on implementation of the strategy on June 13 where members of the public spoke and expressed concern about the impacts it has on downtown safety. Executive director of the Downtown Business Revitalization Zone said the downtown is “becoming a warzone” and is dangerous.
Darroch says though there are troubling events downtown, he is working to make it inviting for residents.
“I feel it is safe to be downtown. When we talk about the challenges that we are currently facing within our downtown core, for sure there are some hurdles that we are trying to overcome — those hurdles are also in place in different cities across western Canada — we are doing the very best we can to deal with those,” he says. “Everybody in our society has a different level of comfort. What my level of comfort is, is very different from other people and that’s based on life experiences, life skills. I understand that there are people that don’t feel comfortable and I am working my butt off to try and change that and make it more inviting because our downtown is awesome.”
He adds the majority of violent crimes in the downtown involve people who are known to each other.
READ MORE: Council hears update on encampments, downtown safety concerns