CALGARY—The city’s new police chief says top-level personnel changes to the Calgary Police Service could be part of his response to workplace culture and morale issues.

Neufeld started the job as Calgary’s top cop just last month, following a search that called for a “transformational leader.” And while he’s still in the early days, Neufeld said he isn’t ruling anything out as he starts off with a focus on the inside of the organization.

“I’m looking at it all,” he said in response to whether leadership changes could be on the table.

“As we understand what the issues are and we talk about developing that shared vision forward, naturally out of that falls: what is the structure that we would need to pursue and achieve that shared vision? And then from that, it’s who would we need to lead?”

Neufeld fills the final spot in what’s been a big police leadership shakeup in Alberta. Edmonton named Dale McFee as their new police chief late last year, just after the Alberta RCMP brought in Curtis Zablocki as their new commanding officer in September 2018.

Neufeld, a 24-year veteran of the Edmonton Police Service who most recently spent two years as police chief in Camrose, Alta., calls himself an “accidental cop” who once planned to become a fish and wildlife officer.

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Neufeld filled his first days as chief by visiting different CPS districts, learning how the organization works and what people have to say about their jobs.

“It’s not a matter of bringing a vision for the CPS in from the outside and saying, ‘I have all the answers.’ Because I don’t,” Neufeld said. “It’s about understanding and listening to people and saying, ‘what do you think the shared vision looks like?’ ”

Neufeld sat down with Star Calgary at the end of June to talk about the biggest challenges he sees for policing in the city and his vision for the way forward.

Crime in Calgary

Neufeld said he has two particular areas of concern so far in Calgary.

The first is violence that saw four men from the Indo-Canadian community killed over the span of about a month this spring. Police have been investigating the homicides as potentially related.

Domestic violence rates also remain a serious concern, and Neufeld said he needs to learn more about whether it’s family violence or specifically intimate partner violence, for example, driving rates up.

“I think before we talk about trying to do something about domestic violence, we need to know exactly what segment of the population this is impacting,” he said.

CPS workplace culture and morale

Low morale among Calgary police officers has been a recurring problem that’s made the news multiple times in recent years. CPS embarked on a human resources reform process in 2017 after bullying and harassment allegations — but the new head of HR left her position after just six months, later telling CBC she encountered “dictator-style leadership.”

Neufeld said he’s currently moving forward to hire a new person for the role. He said he supports the idea of a civilian head of HR, and thinks it’s important for that person to report directly to the chief.

He said it’s also crucial not to put the onus for change all on one person.

“There’s no saviour approach to this. In a big organization, one person is not going to fix everything,” he said.

Neufeld said he’s hearing mixed responses about workplace culture and morale from his officers.

“What I’ve heard from a lot of people is that people are frustrated because the workplace issues that you hear about — the bullying and harassment — they say that’s not their experience,” Neufeld said.

“But at the same time, we have to be very cautious, because that is the case for some people ... It’s not necessarily pervasive in the culture. But it’s definitely present in the culture.”

Making sure supervisors are equipped to handle issues and have paths to report more serious problems is important to Neufeld. But in certain serious cases, he said he favours using formal tools in the Police Act to deal with it.

“I don’t think we want to start there,” he said.

“But if we have supervisors who were actually being inappropriate to workers, and also if we have people whose names are coming up again and again and again, I don’t think that’s the informal world anymore.

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“I think that should actually be a Police Act issue. And we should be dealing with that through disciplinary means.”

Harm reduction and supervised consumption sites

Calgary’s single supervised consumption site has been a source of debate in recent months. It’s the only space in the city to access a safer environment to use illicit drugs and prevent overdose deaths, but people in the surrounding neighbourhood have also reported increased social disorder.

Neufeld sees supervised consumption sites as a necessary piece in the response to the opioid crisis, but he agrees with others at CPS who have said that an uptick in methamphetamines on the streets makes the situation more complicated.

“The meth issue has probably ebbed and flowed over the years, and right now I would say it’s definitely flowing,” he said.

But social disorder issues mean CPS has had to step up their presence, which also has complicated effects.

“If there’s a lot of police presence around there, you may actually be deterring folks from going and taking advantage of those sites,” Neufeld said. “So it’s just interesting as we find our way and our place in that integrated response to crises like this.”

Naming homicide victims

The Edmonton Police Service announced last month that they would reverse a conservative interpretation of privacy laws that saw the force withhold homicide victims’ names unless police saw an investigative need to release them.

Edmonton’s practice of keeping the names secret drew significant media criticism, and Calgary’s new chief said it isn’t part of his plan. CPS hasn’t historically taken the same approach as Edmonton, although there were two cases this year where the force didn’t make names public.

“Our approach was ‘we release unless,’ and I think (Edmonton’s) approach was ‘we don’t release — unless,’ ” Neufeld said.

“I would say in most cases, we should be releasing the names,” he said, barring times when families bring a “compelling reason” for it not to come out or when making the name public could hinder an investigation.

CPS cannabis policy

Just before recreational cannabis was legalized across Canada last October, CPS said that any officers qualified to carry firearms and who might be sent to respond to a scene would be barred from consuming cannabis at any time — even off the job.

Other police agencies like Vancouver went in a different direction, mandating that officers must show up to work “fit for duty” — in other words, not under the influence of any substances — but could consume during time off.

Neufeld said he is supportive of a “fit for duty” approach — but added CPS wasn’t wrong to be cautious, and their take wasn’t unique to Calgary.

Attempts to find more studies and information about cannabis and “safety-sensitive workplaces” like policing, even after legalization, hasn’t turned up much, according to Neufeld. And he continues to listen to what the Alberta Association of Chiefs of Police has to say.

“We’re going to look at that and see where we land.”

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