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Downtown Crime

^City Council has to direct their questions and concerns through the Police Commission. Finally people are stating to push for changes Downtown, which is putting pressure on EPS through City Council. Prior to this is was Downtown being used a political football by all sides. Regardless of funding, the Chief finally admitted Downtown isn't being prioritized. I have so many stories to support this, but to have this on the record is helpful.

I'm sure there will be more discussion Wednesday when EPS funding in general is debated. The last two days have been more about discussing what to do with the money Council withheld.
 
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The issue with the beat cops is that they travel in groups, which totally negates how much ground they can cover.

Why not have cameras at every intersection DT and have one or two cops monitor and deploy beat cops accordingly. I think this would also do wonders for break/enter, and theft. Most of these occur between 2am to 5am.

This is not new, i seen this in Portland's entertainment district
 
They needed a second helicopter and an armoured vehicle that only 2 other municipalities in Canada have, but EPS can't devote the resources to community policing downtown?

We don't need politicians directing police, but surely there has to be more accountability than this.
 
The issue with the beat cops is that they travel in groups, which totally negates how much ground they can cover.

Why not have cameras at every intersection DT and have one or two cops monitor and deploy beat cops accordingly. I think this would also do wonders for break/enter, and theft. Most of these occur between 2am to 5am.

This is not new, i seen this in Portland's entertainment district
By procedure (and their own safety) police officers never walk alone and should always be in pairs, at least, but it would be more efficient to have several pairs patrolling both on foot and on vehicles/bikes, instead of larger groups.
 
It's what they do in Tokyo and much of Japan.

Police are community ambassadors, good neighbours, neighbourhood watch and are received very positively.
 
The following motion from Sohi was approved yesterday, ""That Administration, work with the Downtown Recovery Coalition, on the deployment of the $5M in provincial funding allocated to Downtown in the last Provincial Budget to fund safety and security initiatives within the core, Chinatown and the surrounding BIA's including HELP, Safe Walk, Downtown Ambassador Program (BIA) and social workers to be paired with increased EPS Beat Patrols"

 
I guess it's ok to see downtown is now be prioritized again (we'll see how this lasts), but unfortunately for us it's too little too late, we're officially leaving downtown June 1st, going to the 'burbs in the meantime, then leaving the city entirely by the end of July.

We might come back in a few years, we'll see how things go... but frankly we're just tired of waiting for this city to become whatever it thinks it wants to be, especially myself, someone who has lived here my whole life (30+ years).
 
^sadly, that sums things up for many.

Here's hoping we can turn things around and get back to the momentum we were building pre-COVID.

We most certainly will. Edmonton has a lot of great people engaged and active in doing that kind of work which is what it will take. As many hands on deck doing different things, small and big, to contribute to the betterment of the city, neighbourhoods and streets.
 
I guess it's ok to see downtown is now be prioritized again (we'll see how this lasts), but unfortunately for us it's too little too late, we're officially leaving downtown June 1st, going to the 'burbs in the meantime, then leaving the city entirely by the end of July.

We might come back in a few years, we'll see how things go... but frankly we're just tired of waiting for this city to become whatever it thinks it wants to be, especially myself, someone who has lived here my whole life (30+ years).

This seems to be an unfortunately common theme for our friends lately. We've had two families we know relocate from the core to other cities, another to the burbs, another outside the city. My wife and I are not downtown but have always lived within the inner ring and have given ourselves the next year for things to improve before we make our exit plans too.
 

Blood on the hands of Sohi, Janz, and all the other fauxgressive members of council at this point.
Couldnt agree more. We need hard solutions ASAP. The time for kumbaya, woke, we need to support every group with issues without offending them, needs to end because this is beyond out of hand.
 

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