[David A]

Last night we held our annual friends Christmas party at The Gardens on 102st/s of Jasper.

A guy was inside, ordered beers, passed out, fell to the floor. A bunch of us went over to help, he gets up and starts trying to fight everyone, we tell him it's time to go, 'help' him outside and thank the two senior citizen men who initially tried to help.

Well this guy starts trying to come back in, trying to kick in the door, windows, saying he is going to 'kill us', and so the owner calls 911. This guy is a risk to the public, us, himself and yet even with blood for his efforts of trying to get back in, not a single EPS officer or car arrived. After about 10-15 minutes of fearing for his safety and ours, he walked off threatening others on the street with punches in their direction, falling over, kicking and breaking things.

I recognize that there was no visible weapon and perhaps there were other more serious incidents occurring pulling resources away, but he had assaulted two people, caused damage to a business, stole and was very much a high likelihood to 'reoffend' down the street.

Something is very, very wrong here with an inability to get to call like that in 15minutes on Jasper and 102st in the middle of your CBD.

I am beginning to wonder if the EPS building prominently downtown is either now an empty shell or a hiding place for the police that they are reluctant to or afraid to leave.

Years ago, there was much talk of community policing, but these days there is no evidence of it in the downtown core, which is unfortunate because without more of a police presence more problems happen and get worse.

I don't know if our city council is afraid to direct the police to do more, or the police are misinforming them about what they are doing, but whatever the case is the current approach is really not working.

 

[Barnaby]

There isn't a willingness to call out EPS on their bad performance by anyone. The only time I've seen EPS on foot since moving DT in August was today. The officers were walking back to their car from the Oilers store.

EPS isn't good at their main job in the CBD, which is absolutely security

 

[Gus Haynes]

I don't know if our city council is afraid to direct the police to do more, or the police are misinforming them about what they are doing, but whatever the case is the current approach is really not working.

I don't know how the city council can direct the police to do more. Isn't that the police commission's responsibility?

 

[IanO]

I am hearing about forthcoming beat officers to the core, but their last 5-6 yrs of redistribution and reaction has clearly failed.

 

[SarcasticMarmot]

There isn't a willingness to call out EPS on their bad performance by anyone. The only time I've seen EPS on foot since moving DT in August was today. The officers were walking back to their car from the Oilers store.

EPS isn't good at their main job in the CBD, which is absolutely security

The only place I see them around Parkdale/Cromdale is lined up at the McDonalds for their free coffee. And yet they are always unavailable when we have someone break into our underground parkade. For one of the best funded police forces in the country they sure do make themselves scarce.