Community Safety and Well-being - The Landscape (Part I)
For the past few weeks at Council, we have discussed some major and incredibly important topics that affect our city and our ward. Community safety and well-being on our streets, on public transportation, in our downtown and our neighbourhoods, as well as ways to adequately fund our police service and coordinate with our helping partners like social services and outreach, have been weighing heavily on the mind of anyone who’s paying attention to municipal politics. I wanted to set the scene for where we are and how we’re planning to address these issues.
This will be the first in a multi-part series on community safety and well-being, and how we can create a City where everyone feels safe and welcome. The following topics will follow this introductory blog:
Community safety and well-being strategy
Policing funding mechanism
Tackling root causes - the role of other levels of government
An ETS bus travelling through Edmonton Chinatown.
Since being elected, my office has consistently received several emails and phone calls every week about safety concerns in our downtown and on transit. Particularly for our Ward, I’ve heard from many who are eagerly awaiting the opening of the Valley Line Southeast but equally anxious about taking transit downtown. We all need to feel safe from violence and harassment when using our public transit system, and feel confident when travelling, or it negates our continued investment in building a strong, connected public transit system. At the same time, we need to recognize that much of the safety concerns stem from multiple systemic crises - from drug poisoning to housing, to mental health care, and pandemic recovery.
The safety concerns culminated recently with the senseless death of two older men in Chinatown, a tragedy that has shaken the community to its core with a much wider impact on Edmontonians’ feelings of safety rippling through our City. Information has since surfaced that highlighted multiple layers of failures in our criminal justice, mental health and addiction systems that could have prevented the tragedy (more on this in Part IV of this blog series). Having been involved in well-being and safety conversations in Chinatown well before the pandemic, and even having organized meetings with elected officials and our Police Chief to share stories, grievances, and find ways to work together, I resonate with much of the heartbreak and burnout that I’m seeing within the community.
Community members marching from Edmonton City Hall to Chinatown for National Day of Action Against Anti-Asian Racism.
We are also hearing about burnout among our frontline staff, whether they are City employees driving buses, cleaning facilities, or uniformed officers, emergency responders or outreach workers walking the streets everyday supporting people. Union leaders and supervisors are coming forward with testimonials from workers about the abuse they are facing; in one recent visit to a social service agency, staff voiced that what they are seeing on the street in terms of mental health and addiction is at the worst level they’ve ever seen. The sheer exhaustion is everywhere.
Waiting on the LRT station platform for help with someone overdosing on a night out volunteering with a mutual aid group
Earlier this year in February, given the early success with the Community Outreach Transit Teams, a new partnership between the City’s transit peace officers and outreach workers from Bent Arrow Traditional Healing Society, we doubled down on our investment to augment the supportive approach to working with vulnerable and marginalized Edmontonians. The goal is to connect people with the needed mental health, social service, and addictions supports, and at the same time increase transit safety and reduce harm. Despite the promising outlook in this work, we’ve also seen some real challenges with hiring to fill these vital roles, with new additional teams only becoming fully implemented in July.
Nevertheless, things are looking up in our downtown with more foot traffic as people start returning to work in the offices, more public spaces are being animated and activated, the return of festivals, and as the City dedicates concentrated clean-up efforts. Meanwhile, City Council continues to work with administration and our partners to strengthen our Conduct of Transit Passengers bylaw, taking a holistic approach in considering the supports needed in various public spaces, and making sure our staff members have the tools they need to address any safety concerns. As this work unfolds, we’ve also approved an interim measure. After rigorous discussion in council, I felt this interim change, while redundant given the existing review that is due to come back, remains a practical and important signal to our employees and passengers about the commitment this Council has to transit safety.
If you are a regular transit commuter, I am very curious about the changes you are experiencing, if any. Please reach out and share your stories.
In the meantime, I also want to highlight some major upcoming discussions that will set the tone for community safety and well-being for years to come. I will be sharing my thoughts on these important and integrated issues in the coming weeks:
Policing funding mechanism
Tackling root causes - the role of other levels of government
