No Sheriffs help for camps, but Lethbridge to get SCAN unit

By Lethbridge Herald on April 29, 2023.

Herald file photo - Police watch as homeless people gather belongings at the Civic Centre field area last October.

Al Beeber – LETHBRIDGE HERALD – abeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

The provincial government has denied a request by city council to have Sheriffs help deal with encampments here this summer.

But it will be putting in Lethbridge an office of the Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods, which is a unit of the Alberta Sheriffs that deals with problem properties. Since its inception in 2008, SCAN has investigated about 7,000 problem properties in the province. 

It keeps communities safe, says the Alberta.ca website, by dealing with properties that are used for specific activities such as drug trafficking, gang-related crime, prostitution and child exploitation.

Recently, city council voted by a 6-2 motion to seek help from the Sheriffs to assist in managing encampments this summer. Council authorized mayor Blaine Hyggen to write a letter on behalf of council and the City to Public Safety and Emergency Services Minister Mike Ellis seeking that assistance on a six-month trial basis starting in May.

The motion stated that in much of 2022 Lethbridge was inundated with encampments with individual camp sites giving way to a massive encampment reaching more than 90 structures in and around Civic Park. “Efforts to provide services and dismantle this encampment took months to accomplish while adjacent neighbourhoods feared for their safety,” the motion added.

On Friday, Hyggen said at City Hall that he was told at this time the Sheriffs don’t have adequate resources to deploy staff here. The Sheriffs have been employed recently in Calgary and Edmonton to deal with crime reduction efforts in those cities.

“We have received communication back that at this time they did not have the adequate resources” to help with Lethbridge camp issues, said the mayor.

The Sheriffs also aren’t fully trained for the specific task of dealing with encampments, the mayor said.

“This is something we’ll be looking at in the future,” he said. 

The SCAN unit is something the City has been looking at “for many years,” Hyggen said.

“What that does is that will help find those that are preying on the most vulnerable – drug dealers, drug houses et cetera. And there will be one of those units set up in Lethbridge. We have asked that for many years.”

SCAN presently brings Sheriffs here from Calgary, Edmonton and other areas.

“That’s extremely exciting news for us,” said the mayor.

The arrival of SCAN is scheduled tentatively for the next few months. But with the provincial election coming in May, Hyggen doesn’t know what could happen if the UCP doesn’t get re-elected.

He said with no locally-based SCAN present yet, the Sheriffs aren’t hearing the feedback that community members have.

“What this does is it will have them on the ground in Lethbridge at all times.”