Amid growing concerns in Old East Village, London Morning's Rebecca Zandbergen met up with London Police Chief Steve Williams on Dundas Street in OEV this week. Williams said the police service is taking 10 per cent more calls from the neighbourhood. Here is a portion of their conversation.

How many foot patrols do you have operating here?

In this area, we have six officers assigned to OEV. Now, they get time off and they work shifts so on any given day, there's probably two to four officers assigned here. It's something we'd like to enhance a bit more so we get more consistency. The messages we're getting loud and clear from the people who live here and the people who work here is that they want to see more police. I'm very aware that, it's something we're really concentrating on. Right now we can provide coverage usually between 7:00 am till 11:00 pm. We'd like to extend that a bit, but just make it more intense during the daytime as well because that's when the most people are out here.

And what is the assignment for the area, as a foot patrol officer?

So, it's a bit of everything. I mean, it's not so much about doing the calls for service. It's about being visible and increasing that sense of safety and security for people. And then, inevitably, the officers come across people who need a helping hand and sometimes we end up arresting people and we start the enforcement piece. But it's really about engaging with the people, and if there's some assistance we can provide: so if it's a homeless person, can we can we assist through one of our community partners, finding them shelter. If it's somebody who's got some substance abuse or addiction issues then, is there help for them, hopefully somewhere that we can tap into. And same with mental illness.

A lot of our calls down here are not criminal in nature. In fact, across the city only about 20 per cent of our calls for service actually have anything to do with crime. The other 80 per cent are disturbances, disorder, mental illness and addiction issues with people who have nowhere to go. Law enforcement can't solve that problem but quite often we're the first call. So it's a matter of tapping into whatever services we can to get people the help, while at the same time making people feel safe and secure around the area.

One of the concerns that we have heard from people who live here and people we've talked to is that people are doing drugs out in the open. How do officers approach that?

Yeah, it's a good question. Years ago we probably would have arrested the person and charged them with a drug offense. That does nothing in my opinion. Unless there's treatment and recovery and all the other supports for somebody who is suffering from addiction. And you'll see it today. And you've seen it before.

There are people suffering down here so our officers have a duty to move them along sometimes if they're in somebody's doorway because that's a very frequent complaint we get. But arresting them is an absolute last resort. We'd rather plug them into a social service where they can get some assistance to solve the deeper rooted problems.

Police Chief Steve Williams says people should call his office if they're unhappy with police response in OEV. (Rebecca Zandbergen/CBC News)

Is there enough assistance in London in the in Old East Village for the folks who need the help?

That's the issue. Not really. There are some supports down here. We have the Inner Community Health Centre and there's a methadone dispensary. That's one reason people congregate here, because that's where the supports are. But those are really temporary for us. I mean, ultimately, in our view, we need longer-term solutions, longer-term investment. Housing, addiction treatment recovery, things like that, so the resources are scarce and it's tied to budget obviously and a lot of that is beyond the control of police.

I see us as a band-aid down here. We can do temporary fixes and make people feel better and hopefully solve some problems in the short-term, but the long-term solutions don't rest with law enforcement. We can't arrest people for being homeless (or for) being addicted. We're a temporary fix but it's an important part of the solution.

There's lots of traction on these discussions on Facebook and there seems to be an increased interest in 'Let's take matters into our own hands.' Are you seeing that yourself?

We don't encourage it. You're basically talking about vigilantism and we haven't seen that, or at least I'm not aware of it. First of all, we need to recognize people are frustrated and we understand that — we're frustrated too. But if people have an issue with somebody causing problems in or around their property or they're just concerned for somebody's welfare, then they do need to call us.

I know our response time isn't always as quick as people would like because there's competing interests, there's a lot of calls for service going on. But if you don't get a quick response: call back. And then, call back again and ultimately, if you don't get the service that that the people deserve or that they want then they need to escalate that, talk to a supervisor. They can call my office if they have issues with their service. The last thing we recommend is people to take the matter in their own hands, because it's not safe sometimes. And it's not going to help things, it will probably just inflame things.