LPS Watch program receives Alberta Community Justice Award

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on July 5, 2022.

Herald photo by Al Beeber The Watch manager Jeff Cove, right, talks to members Elizabeth Thomas and Sean Middleton at Lethbridge Police Service headquarters.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

Since its founding in 2019 by the Lethbridge Police Service to help make the community a safer place, manager Jeff Cove has seen the organization grow and earn provincial recognition.
Staffed by volunteers from their 20s to 60s, many with an interest in pursuing law enforcement careers, The Watch is a downtown-based program using social outreach, intervention and connections to help make the streets of Lethbridge safer.
The Watch recently was honoured with a 2022 Alberta Community Justice Award in Lacombe.
Watch members are a visible presence downtown 2 hours a day, seven days a week.
Since its inception, The Watch has taken care of many matters which otherwise would have been dealt with by police, freeing officers’ time to take care of other matters.
Cove, a retired city police officer, said the Watch is a result of city council in 2019 asking the police chief at the time to get more creative about resources.
“It was about looking at things the police are currently doing that they ought not to be doing. When I was policing, it was like people would call the police about things like people sleeping in a park, those kinds of things,” he said.
These types of matters took resources and sometimes social outreach or an ambulance were needed rather than police. Then right resources would have to be found and reports written, said Cove.
“It takes a lot of police time doing that,” he Said.
“The idea of The Watch is to be able to manage the things that people call the police for but you don’t really need the police for,” added Cove.
“The first year that we were out there, there were 1,400 things we had done,” including high visibility location checks, said Cove.
“That equates to the times when people would call the police and say ‘hey, I have these crimes that are happening in my neighbourhood or there are suspicious people in my neighbourhood. Can you do more patrols?”
Police would have beat officers do location checks and do other things they didn’t have time to do with police dealing with about 40,000 calls for service every year, he said.
“They just don’t have the time or capacity for that so those are the things that The Watch does. So people will call” and report negative behaviour and The Watch addresses those matters in its jurisdiction.
Iin 2019 The Watch did 1,400 location and wellness checks, including of people who didn’t appear to be conscious and functioning..
“So out of all those things in the first year, we had about 24 per cent of the stuff we did involved the police, which was a lot, considering how few things we did,” added Cove.
Fast forward two years and in 2021 The Watch handled 6,517 matters including location checks, EMS calls, wellness checks, safe walks, detox intakes and transportation calls, said Cove, and only one per cent involved, “which is a huge drop.
“So we were doing more of the peripheral things that don’t require the police,” Cove added.
The Watch works with more than 20 partner agencies from the public and private sectors, he said.
“Having connections with them and being able to connect people with services, that’s been really huge over the last couple of years,” he said.
The Watch also locates people for LPS or social services agencies.
The Watch has seen 106 people go through the program. Six people, including Cove, have been with The Watch since the start. Two are still volunteers, the others being team leads. Those volunteers also have full-time jobs.
“They see an opportunity to help somebody in a particular way and they are encouraged outside the box. How can we help somebody without involving the police?…how can we help people and make things safer for people downtown?,” said Cove.
Volunteers utilize Cove as their gateway to help make community connections, he said.
The Watch averages about 40 calls a month from people who have a person in their business needing assistance or someone sleeping in a doorway who might need assistance.
The Watch will send someone over to see what is needed for that person. Safe walks are done to help people get to the homeless shelter safely. Because of their addictions and being on substances, they may have a difficult time getting there so The Watch will help book people in so they have some type of roof over their head, added Cove.
All volunteers are given comprehensive training including diversity and street awareness as well as CPR and First-Aid training. They also learn de-escalation techniques, Narcan administration, overdose recognition and other skills.
In the past year alone, The Watch members have managed 32 emergency medical service events, including 13 where they utilized nasal Narcan and life-saving first aid.
Volunteers “learn really really important skills for anybody who wants to go into a career in law enforcement,” such as simple things like having a conversation and building relationships. They learn empathy, said Cove.
Each shift has between four and eight members with The Watch on duty from 10 a.m. until 10 p.m. daily.

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