Most LPS concerns alleviated, says commission chair
By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on September 9, 2022.
LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com
The Community Safety Standing Policy Committee of Lethbridge city council was provided Thursday at its meeting with an update from the Lethbridge Police Commission on its strategic and annual plans.
Submitted by Rob VanSpronsen, chair of the police commission administration, the report was submitted as information and unanimously accepted by the committee.
That committee consists of chair Mark Campbell, deputy mayor Jenn Schmidt-Rempel and councillors John Middleton-Hope and Ryan Parker.
Middleton-Hope and Parker wore black armbands in honour of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday.
VanSpronsen told the SPC on April 12 a letter was sent to Justice Minister Tyler Shandro and the mayor’s office with a report addressing an action plan instituted by former Justice Minister Kaycee Madu who had concerns about public confidence in the LPS.
“The LPS and the commission developed our action plan and presented our report. With that report that we presented on the 12th, we made the request that the minister consider this to be the final report. We had felt that we had sufficiently restructured the LPS and we felt the concerns addressed by the minister we’ve dealt with,” VanSpronsen said.
VanSpronsen said the commission received a letter a couple of weeks ago from the Justice Minister who indicated he felt the commission’s request would be granted and this would be the final report with the proviso that it would roll the plan into a strategic plan moving forward.
“This is a living document in that the concerns that were mentioned by the minister we will continue to follow up on,” said VanSpronsen.
Five pillars of the LPS action plan, said the commission chair, include ethics and accountability, leadership development, employee wellness and mental health education, database access and communication strategy.
“As of April, we had 37 of 52 items completed. We had some ongoing matters we continued to work through,” said VanSpronsen, adding the commission doesn’t want to see that simply as a checklist but rather as an ongoing document.
VanSpronsen thanked the LPS, especially its chief and executive for the work they did and added a special thanks to the city’s police officers.
“As a commission, we are committed to our role as governance and oversight, he said.
The strategic plan of the commission has four themes including governance, capacity/innovation, partnership and engagement, he told the committee.
The chair said he’s been on the commission for six years and in the first three years, the commission was in reactive mode, putting out fires and dealing with issues and concerns and it was always trying to play catch up.
“The last three years have been much, much better” with the commission being more proactive, he said. He said the commission has been working on strategic planning and community planning which it hadn’t necessarily done in the past.
“I feel very confident about the direction the commission is going,” he added, saying “the police service of 2017 is not the same as it is now in 2022.”
Mehdizadeh told the SPC in response to a question from Campbell on his perspective “I came to this job obviously knowing there were issues” that needed to be dealt with.
“Immediately I came here trying to figure out what was going on in the department. And immediately we were starting to look at different initiatives we needed to put in place. Obviously, the discipline process was not good, there were files that were left from many, many years that needed to be dealt with. The culture of the organization needed some adjustment and retuning,” he said.
The chief added the force had issues with infighting between management and the union “so there were many, many significant issues we had to deal with.
“So as a result, we started coming up with different initiatives” to move the organization forward, he said.
One was the culture piece and ethics and the other was modernization of the force, he said.
The chief said the force had “a bunch of initiatives” moving forward before Madu made the decision to ask for an action plan.
“The action plan, really if someone was to critically look at it, wasn’t really anything we were told to just start doing, it gave us an opportunity to compile the initiatives that we had already put in place, to be able to convince the minister and his staff that we already engaged on that front of rebuilding and assure them that we are on the right track,” said Mehdizadeh.
The report submitted to the SPC says the strategic plan was created using the Police Act as a guiding strategic document.
It says the commission has worked closely with the Justice Minister’s office and LPS to resolve the public confidence issue and has shared regular updates of the action plan.
The focus of the commission in 2022, says the report, “will be to mitigate the effect of the reduction in the budget in an effort to maintain the same service level as before. The development of a strategic plan is an important step in the process.”
On Sept. 28, the commission will present an operating budget for the years covering 2023 to 2026 to city council which the report says “will reflect an effort to relieve the current budget pressures and present new initiatives necessary to provide policing for the City.”
Follow @albeebHerald on Twitter
30-29
Where are the police? Why has downtown been over-run with vagrants sleeping all over, not just the encampments in Galt Gardens or the civic center?
I suppose we will have to do it ourselves. Organize patrols and make the arrests ourselves.
During protests on the northside of our city to shut down the drug-house and take back their neighborhood, some suggested making arrests since no one else would. After watching our downtown continue to grow worse, I agree!
To the best of my knowledge, if a person it committing a criminal or hybrid offense, I can arrest them.
To the best of my knowledge, if police refuse to charge the person, I can go to the Crown Prosecutor and have them charged.
Why do we elect people to office? Why do we pay police and bylaw people when nothing gets done?
What a city! Time to get organize and get people training to legally arrest people ourselves! Doesn’t anyone work anymore?