After a full year in the hot seat at the head of the St. Albert RCMP, Insp. Ken Foster isn't slowing down. In fact, he's setting his sights on achieving some lofty goals in the coming year.
An ambitious set of strategic goals for the 2016-17 year, established in consultation with stakeholders and the public, covers three perennial policing issues within the city. But it also notably includes looking at ways to reduce the amount of time front-line officers spend in a criminal context with offenders suffering from mental health issues.
In 2015 police handled around 280 files involving individuals suffering from mental health issues, and although that's a relatively small percentage of the more than 10,000 files each year, those sorts of interactions can end up taking up a lot of resources.
"It takes a tremendous amount of our time and resources dealing with people with mental health issues, which is a medical condition, not a crime issue," Foster said. "There's a moral and ethical factor there as well. These become a medical issue where I don't want to see them criminalized."
While he understands there are many resources already dedicated to this issue, he sees some individuals "falling through the cracks," and hopes to work with local social agencies and mental health agencies to see a crisis response team established that can help address this issue.
"Perhaps there's opportunity where we can leverage our collective resources, or perhaps make a business case for some additional resources including social workers and mental health workers to perhaps create some crisis team to help these folks who are in crisis," he said.
Foster said he would also like to see increased education of front-line officers in a workshop setting to help them with tools to better address issues with those suffering mental-health problems.
The other three priorities he identified are also fairly ambitious topics to tackle: Property crimes and drug issues, police visibility and traffic safety.
Several specific efforts will be made to help reduce the amount of property crime in the city, and much of it revolves around simply "gathering intelligence."
"If we're seeing certain individuals in places that are high crime areas, even though they haven't committed a crime at that time, that might be potentially someone we need to be aware of," Foster said.
This also includes keeping close tabs on offenders who are out on bail or out on probation, and ensuring they are abiding by their conditions.
This could potentially both help the offender keep on the "straight and narrow," but also help prevent repeat offences.
Foster said working harder in the drug enforcement side of things goes hand in hand with this goal, since those who have drug addictions may tend to resort to theft to feed their habit.
"Drugs and property crimes go hand in hand, there's no doubt about it," he said.
On the community engagement and communication front, Foster said he hopes to continue with and increase efforts in some already successful areas.
"Out of 11 postings I've been to, this is the best I've ever seen in any detachment," he said. "But that's not without the support of the community, and the mayor and council, wanting and funding and supporting those initiatives."
Police already dedicate a lot of time and resources into things like the golf-cart patrol and bicycle patrols in the summer time, and the School Resource Officers working with youth in the community also make a significant impact.
"We get such good public feedback on that," he said. "That is a high priority for us."
Finally, with respect to traffic safety, Foster said he sees the efforts already underway in St. Albert and across the province as good, but he wants to see more.
"I want an aggressive education campaign around distracted drivers, on top of what the province is already doing, and then an enforcement component to that," he said.
Bad habits abound on city streets, and he emphasized that while it's often otherwise good, law-abiding people who display these bad habits, they are modelling that behaviour for the younger generation – and distracted driving is of particular concern on that front, and he hopes to mirror the success anti-drunk-driving campaigns have had.
"I think the youth are a lot better today around impaired driving than previous generations were, but the distracted driving part really scares me. If we don't really concentrate on that, we'll deal with the impacts of that for a long time."
Foster concedes these goals are set fairly high, but said he has confidence his organization and its members can rise to the challenge.
"If we don't reach them all at 100 per cent of our goals, that's not a failure, but if you don't stretch yourself and challenge the individual (members), you won't achieve it," he said.
2015 successes
While the goals he has set may be relatively lofty, they're based on some significant successes Foster has seen in the year since he arrived in St. Albert.
Among those most notable successes, he said, is with community engagement and building relationships in the community.
He cited the incident at Paul Kane School in February this year, when police received a report that a threat had been made against a staff member – a potentially serious situation.
But officers responded, working with school staff, and provided extra security at the school on the day the threat was said to take place.
"The collaboration we have with the schools, and the work on that relationship we have developed and continue to work upon in the schools, made that come together very easily and very quickly," he said. "Everybody did the job that needed to be done, and I think the response was appropriate."
Another big success he spoke of was the way the department as a whole and individual members have come through the tragic murder of Const. David Wynn and attempted murder of Aux. Const. Derek Bond.
"We had folks that were hurt and damaged, there's no question, and I think we've emerged from that. That doesn't mean folks don't have long-term effects from that, but the supports are there," he said. "The support we received from the community is fantastic, and continues to be going forward."
