Lethbridge Police vehicle. (Lethbridge News Now)

By David Opinko

LPS to create new “Crime Suppression Team”

Dec 9, 2019 | 4:49 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – The Lethbridge Police Service (LPS) was tasked with looking into the possibility of hiring eight additional officers, but its acting chief has come back with another idea.

Scott Woods believes the ask from council would not adequately address the root causes of crime in the community.

Instead, he wants to create a team utilizing eight non-patrol officers that are currently employed by LPS.

“They’re going to be an overt and covert unit, focused on the behaviours associated to some of the things we’re seeing or even around the city, specifically to lower-level drug dealing, property crimes, break and enters – we’ve seen a large spike in that – stolen autos, car prowlings, and some violent behaviour we’re seeing in the city.”

The team’s specific mandate, as outlined in Wood’s presentation to city council on Monday, is, “Targeted enforcement action on individual and groups demonstrating negative, unwanted behaviour, and committing serial criminal offences.”

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By taking this approach, the acting chief hopes to take a more “proactive” approach rather than going after crime “reactively”.

The other issue Woods had with simply hiring more officers is the timeline.

Between the hiring and training processes, he estimates that it would take anywhere from 18-24 months to get a new hire ready to be out in the field on their own. Alternatively, he can create a new team immediately and have it ready in the first couple weeks of January 2020.

He says LPS would have to look into where in their own ranks these eight officers for the team could come from.

“Everything’s on the table at this point, so we’ll have to have a look at where we can pull some people. Like I stated inside [council chambers] as well, we’ve got some people off on some different forms of modifications in their duties that we can maybe use the backfill of some of the resources that we’re going to pull into areas that we need resources in order to make the team functional.”

By creating the team now, however, it does create a gap in police staffing. This is why Woods wants council to hire eight officers to replace the members who join the Crime Suppression Team.

Whether the officers are hired to replace the team members or simply to bolster LPS’ numbers as council initially wanted, it would cost around $3-million over three years plus $270,000 per year in administrative and support costs.

Woods believes the price tag is necessary to further combat the rising tide of crime in Lethbridge and to work alongside other taskforces like The Watch, Community Peace Officers, and the Downtown Policing Unit.

He says he can go ahead and create the team without the input of council as it would not cost anything. As for hiring officers to replace the team members, he would still have to put in a formal request.