By Aaron Mahoney (@Mahones93 on Twitter) with files from Geoff Smith (@GeoffSmithLNN)

Taber Police Chief raises local issue of crystal methamphetamine

Dec 13, 2018 | 2:37 PM

TABER – The drug crisis currently crippling parts of the country, including in Southern Alberta, has changed.

It’s not only opioids anymore, but more and more what community leaders, first responders and police services are also finding is that methamphetamine is becoming more prevalent, specifically crystal methamphetamine.

That led Taber Police Chief Graham Abela to make a Facebook post on Wednesday, Dec. 12, to talk about how this is not some big city problem anymore – it has made its way to smaller communities like his.

Abela says they’ve seen an influx of crystal methamphetamine come into their community, and they’re now starting to seize it.

“Before, we knew that the substance was in the community here and there, but since we’ve been starting to seize larger quantities it’s time to let the public know. One of our mandates within our mission and vision statement is to inform the public about what’s happening, and they need to know this is an issue. We need to get in front of it, and we’ve done it before here in this community, back in the 2000s when crack cocaine became a big issue for us.”

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Known as more of a big city problem in the past, Abela confirms that it hasn’t come and gone in Taber, this is a new development.

“I’ve been a police officer here for almost 28 years, and crystal methamphetamine as a drug has not hit our radar. We’re not naïve enough to say it hasn’t been here, but from a policing perspective, it hasn’t hit our radar.

“I think that’s in large part because of the work of our community around building resiliency with our youth, our community partnerships that we’ve built with groups like the Taber Community Against Drugs and the Taber Community Action and Prevention society, our work as a regional hub in a hub model to address issues of drug use and abuse.”

As a result of that, Abela believes his community has become resilient to the drug issue, but what’s happened now is that there’s a trend occurring where all communities are being hit with crystal methamphetamine as a drug of choice and they’re not immune to it.

“It’s now coming here, it impacts communities, it significantly impacts community safety, and we want to make sure as a police service that we’re informing individuals in our community that from our perspective we’re going to deal with it,” he continued. “But the community needs to get involved and the community needs to rally and build capacity around resilience to make sure this drug does not become entrenced.”

When asked for an example of the changes he’s noticed, Abela simply described it as bizarre behaviour occurring.

“Behaviour that’s more violent when we have interactions with individuals. Our use of force deployments are up, we as a police service historically have very few use of force incidents with the public, most of our public is very compliant with the Taber Police Service. We treat people in a way that’s compassionate and empathetic and we very really use our tools, but we use our tools now.”

In particular, Abela mentioned just the other day they had a gentleman from the community high on methamphetamine walking down the street, who was disrobing as he was walking.

“It’s behaviour we haven’t seen, and it’s the crystal methamphetamine that’s causing it, and not only that it’s driving up our crime. We’re seeing more and more thefts and property raid incidents that are fueling the drug market,” Abela said, adding they’re up 400% with our drug possessions and most of those are around crystal meth.

As far as strategies to deal with the issue, Abela believes they have the blueprint from challenges of the past.

“We need to ensure that our community is resilient to drug activity. We need to promote a safe community, one in which we have not only the police dealing with this issue but one in which the community takes responsibility and ownership of an issue and then rallies to build support and capacity around drug use and abuse.

“As a police service we know that this is an addiction, and we know that we’re dealing with medical issues and mental health issues here. However, we know that also drives crime, so our job in public safety is to make sure we look after that,” Abela stated.

He says that while police can be the individuals to meet and discuss, and to host and rally, it’s really the community that has to take a hold of that and do it.

“In the past, we’ve done that, with the Taber Community Against Drugs group, which was founded quite a while ago now. I can tell you I give them a lot of credit for what they’ve done in our community, specifically around building resiliency in youth that’s led to our community being one of the safest in Alberta for our size. We have a community that is safe, and we want to keep it that way and it’s going to take the whole community to do that not just the police.”