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“Our staff are expected to be in a constant state of high alert — people’s lives depend on them,” Clarkson said. “Overdoses occur approximately every second day and if our staff do not respond effectively, people die.”

Clarkson said the city needs as many harm-reduction, detox and treatment services as it can get, and that supervised consumption services are needed “to alleviate the number of overdoses our staff have been responding to.”

Photo by Brendan Miller/Postmedia

She wasn’t the only speaker to advocate for more supervised consumption services in Calgary. Many others addressed the six-person panel at the Boyce Theatre on the importance of the service provided out of the Sheldon M. Chumir Health Centre in the Beltline. But the committee appointed by the Alberta government to review the social and economic effects of current and proposed supervised consumption sites across the province also heard from local residents concerned about safety and crime in the inner-city community surrounding the Safeworks site.

Greg Tufford, the manager of an office building in the area, told the committee that since the facility opened, there has been “a dramatic increase in unwanted activity.”

“I keep being told I need to have empathy for these people but, on my part, empathy has left the building,” he said. “It’s time that some empathy be directed at the affected businesses, residences . . . all of which are dealing on an hourly, daily basis, 24/7, (with) crime, drugs, camping, loitering, littering, defecating, urinating, dealing, threats of personal harm and trespassing,” he said.