Canadian police leadership to meet on extortion file as cases rise in Calgary

Top police chiefs from across Canada are coming together soon to deal with a growing and alarming problem — extortion.

Police have said there has been at least 13 reported extortion attempts in Calgary since July, and many extortion-related shootings in the city over the past 12 months.

The most recent of which happened last weekend in Redstone.

Mount Royal University criminal justice professor Doug King says cases or extortion keep happening because the tactics are working, and criminals have become emboldened.

“Transnational organized crime that targeted British Columbia first and is now spreading into Alberta; this is like an infection, it keeps spreading and spreading and spreading until you actually stop it,” he said. “We need to move quickly to get it stopped, or somebody is really going to get hurt.”

At Wednesday’s Calgary Police Commission meeting, Deputy Chief Asif Rashid said it’s a team effort to tackle the situation.

“We continue to collaborate nationally with the RCMP, the Canada Border Services Agency, and multiple police agencies across Canada to ensure intelligence sharing and coordinated enforcement,” he said. “These crimes, as we know, have been reported across Canada, with varying degrees of violence involving threats, intimidation, shootings in many cases, and demands for very large sums of money.”

Ontario MP Larry Brock is among those calling for immediate action.

“Extortion is out of control — businesses and families and being threatened, shot at, and shaken down daily,” he said. “For crying out loud, do something about this crisis.”

Some experts are describing places like Calgary, Brampton, and Surrey as ground-zero for rising extortion cases.

It’s bad enough that Surrey’s mayor, Brenda Locke, has called for a national state of emergency.

King believes it will be crucial for different police agencies to work together.

“It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the people who did the shooting here in Calgary at the homes and maybe some of the extortion arsons that took place in Edmonton — that if the people that actually physically did it disappeared back into British Columbia that afternoon,” he said.

B.C. Premier David Eby is getting help from Prime Minister Mark Carney on this issue.

“Prime Minister committed as did his minister, that there would be an increase in RCMP resources for British Columbia on this file,” he said from Ottawa Wednesday.

The meeting in Surrey is expected sometime in the next two weeks and will include police leadership from Alberta, B.C., Manitoba, and Ontario.

Some experts claim extortion-related cases have increased by 300 per cent in the last decade.

CityNews has reached out to Calgary police to determine what its next steps are, and whether or not Chief Katie McClellan will be among those at Surrey’s meeting.