New downtown officers looking to make an impact
By Lethbridge Herald on February 13, 2025.
Lethbridge Police Service Const. Tanner Campbell and Const. Dayton Pagliericci are two of the now six constables part of the Downtown Policing Unit, which recently gained four new members.
Herald photo by Alejandra Pulido-GuzmanAlejandra Pulido-Guzman – LETHBRIDGE HERALD – apulido@lethbridgeherald.com
The Lethbridge Police Service Downtown Policing Unit has gained additional officers to better serve the downtown area, its residents, businesses and those visiting for various reasons.
The Downtown Policing Unit (DPU) provides a first response to incidents that take place in downtown and officers engage in various proactive initiatives to target both criminal activity and social disorder.
Sergeant Ryan Darroch, with the DPU told reporters Thursday that as of January of this year, LPS was able to staff four extra positions in the DPU, bringing the total of officers to seven. Six constables and one sergeant.
“We’ve seen positive impacts of some more proactive interactions with the public and targeting specific negative social sort of behaviors, like open drug use, some violent events and we’ve seen a significant impact on property crimes,” said Darroch.
He said many of the local business owners have expressed their welcome to the new officers, as they have been previously negatively impacted for years by property crimes like thefts and shoplifting.
“They welcome the extra officers, and it just allows us to have an event take place, somebody calls the police, and we can respond in timely fashion, or even when the subject is still inside the store or running away,” said Darroch.
He added that it also means they can do more, the more resources they have, the more calls they can take on and the more they can help the citizens that live and work in downtown. Because for him as a police officer, it hurts when they can’t get to a call within a reasonable time and be able to help those who need them.
“As police officers we took this job to help people and when it takes this time to get to calls or we don’t have the resources to address those events appropriately, I wear that, that goes home with me. So, I’m proud and happy to have a positive impact in our downtown core, with a bunch of awesome police officers that I get to work with,” said Darroch.
One of those officers is Constable Dayton Pagliericci and he said he wanted to join the DPU because he started his career as a Community Peace Officer six years ago, and at the time, they were specifically assigned to downtown and he fell in love with it.
“I’m a B.C. boy myself so coming out to Alberta here I noticed how beautiful and historic downtown that we have. So, I joined the downtown because it was an opportunity for me to engage with my community, the new community that has welcomed me,” said Pagliericci.
He said he has seen the problems just like everybody else has, and he wants to make a difference in downtown, especially with the thefts and the small business owners.
“When I was a CPO, our community peace officers have that authority for theft under $5,000, so I was dealing with a lot of shoplifting at that time, which we have a big issue here. Now that I’ve moved into the police position, a lot of that drug use is happening, and that’s what I’m up to the challenge for,” said Pagliericci.
Building on the success of targeted enforcement projects throughout 2024 that resulted in more than 300 arrests for open drug use, nearly 450 arrest warrants executed, over 200 criminal charges and 2,000 doses of methamphetamine and fentanyl being seized.
“We did see some significant impact on those projects and we’re hoping to continue those in 2025 but keeping in mind with these extra resources that we have been able to deploy in downtown, we have curbed some of that behaviour already, especially when it comes to open drug use,” said Darroch.
The enhanced DPU, along with members of the Crime Suppression Team, Property Crimes Unit, Community Peace Officers and Patrols will conduct similar enforcement projects throughout 2025 that will target high frequency offenders and downtown locations with higher volumes of crime.
17-16
Myself and many of my fellow business owners downtown have grown to respect Sgt Darroch over the years for his hard work downtown and he quickly earned our respect and we are cautiously optimistic. We do not blame the members on patrol, but higher up leadership, who have allowed our downtown to slide to be over-run by criminals and addicts.
At one point the downtown unit only a few months ago only had 2 members and night times and weekends the criminals had free reign it appeared.
Leadership failed us! But as one of my coffee friends who resides downtown points out, you can have 30 police patrolling downtown, but if laws are not being enforced and deterents used, it will do nothing! He also reminded me that although it will be 8 members with the Sgt, that isn’t 8 members 24/7. Those 8 have to be separated into shifts, include holidays, sick/injury leave, and that reduces the number on patrol. Increasing the shelter space from 120 to 230 is going to heavily tax this new members and that will mean downtown will be the hotspot once again,
When you have areas with the highest levels of crime, you don’t reduce manpower, you do not say other cities have it so we will just have to suck it up!
This very much was/is a leadership problem! Downtown business has had enough and we are standing up for our businesses and will continue to push for change at Police Commission meetings and Council meetings if change is not seen. We will no longer be silent as our businesses are destroyed!
I wish these new members well and support them! I do not support the leadership who have failed us!
George Bernard Shaw said: ‘Poverty is the worst of crimes All the other crimes are virtues beside it; all the other dishonors are chivalry itself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities, spreads horrible pestilences, strikes dead the very souls of all who come within sight, sound, or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing: a murder here and a theft there, a blow now, and a curse then. What do they matter? They are only the accidents and illnesses of life; there are not fifty genuine professional criminals in London. But there are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill-fed, ill-clothed people. They poison us morally and physically; they kill the happiness of society; they force us to do away without our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss. Only fools fear crime; we all fear poverty.’
Further, Rabi Abraham Joshua Heschel said of society that ‘few are guilty, but all are responsible.’
The crime of poverty, of addiction, of homelessness is a communal crime. Raging against them is an act of fear and impotence. We can do better.