Calgary police respond to ‘unprecedented’ increase in shootings

Calgary police were facing the heat Wednesday as they took questions about increased shootings and crime in the city.

Justice Minister Tyler Shandro announced a $5.2 million Alberta Crime Prevention grant to help curb the rise in crime in the province.

This grant arrived during an increase in shootings in Calgary, with the city sitting at 97 shootings for the year, compared to 54 at the same time last year.

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Calgary police chief Mark Neufeld said at a press conference that 87 is the average annual number of shootings in Calgary over a five year period. He says the 97 shootings at this point in the year are “unprecedented in this city.”

“These are a lot of traumatic events that our officers and other first responders are attending to that are not easy events to go to” Neufeld said. “I certainly feel for the folks that are involved in in the communities.”

There have been three shootings in the Radisson Heights area in a 13 day period, with two in the span of three days. Neufeld says he and the police “don’t feel great about it.”

“I certainly feel for the folks that are involved in [those] communities, because I see the comments in the media there from individuals living in Radisson and [other] places that they consider to be safe communities,” Neufeld said.

“I consider those to be safe communities, but they’re not feeling safe, and I completely understand, so it makes me feel like we really need to redouble our efforts to be working with community to see what we can do to try to intervene where we can.”

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The police chief says that it’s been difficult to determine how the shootings are happening, and he says it was more obvious in previous years.

“Looking at the 97 [shootings] and trying to figure out what the main drivers are has been more difficult,” Neufeld said.

“There’s been 75 per cent of the shootings [that] have been attributable to other reasons and other drivers. And some of them have more of an element of randomness to them, which makes them more difficult to intervene in.”

Neufeld says gun violence has increases in other major cities in North America, and says the numbers of shootings shouldn’t become normalized.

“I think we all accept that in the large cities there, we’re going to have a certain level of violence, but certainly, when I look back, I don’t have to look back very far to 2018 to see a number like 46.” Neufeld said.

“When I look at a number like this this early in the year, that’s problematic, and I don’t ever want to see that normalized here in our city.”

Police have seized 303 guns linked to crimes, with Neufeld saying it’s consistent with other years. He also says there has been an increase in firearms overall.

He says there are three main ways guns are getting in the hands of criminals.

Guns have been smuggled from the U.S., some guns have been stolen during a break-in-enter, and guns are being purchased through straw buyers, where people with licenses may buy the gun and then they pass them off to organized crime.