29-05-2025
Calgary police see decrease in officer-public interactions, use of force: report
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There's been a drop in the use of force by Calgary police officers, suggests a report presented to the Calgary Police Commission by the Calgary Police Service on Wednesday.
According to the report, police used force in 818 incidents last year.
It's a decrease of approximately nine per cent from 2023's count of 901 cases, as well as around eight per cent lower than the five-year average of 893 incidents.
The numbers go hand-in-hand with an overall drop in officer-public interactions in 2024, with officers making public contact 574,246 times last year compared to 588,407 in 2023.
Of those nearly 575,000 officer-public interactions, force was used by officers in 0.14 per cent of responses, or one in every 702 cases.
Mount Royal University criminal justice professor Doug King highlighted two factors he says are likely behind the recent decrease in use of force by officers.
"My inclination is to think that there may have been a service-wide directive indicating, 'Hey, don't be doing this unnecessarily, make sure you have some reasons for doing it," he said.
"It could also have been a change in police officer training that they were last year being trained to do it, and this year they were being told, 'Well, that probably wasn't the right tactic.'"
The Calgary Police Service report indicates that "de-escalation communication skills and policy compliance continue to be emphasized through training, use of force reporting review and feedback."
It also states that an officer safety and tactics training researcher with a background in psychology, human performance and behaviour was recruited at the Chief Crowfoot Learning Centre, a training centre for Calgary police officers, in 2024.
Responses to property crimes such as break-and-enters and vehicle theft decreased this year, while violent crimes including assaults and domestic violence increased from both 2023 and the five-year average.
The four uses of force most frequently executed by police last year were dynamic takedowns (335 cases), stuns/strikes (184), Tasers (162) and leg restraints (102). Police service dogs made contact with people 49 times, the same number as in 2023, while firearms were fired four times and only one tire deflation device was deployed.
King criticized the report's failure to discuss high-profile cases involving the Calgary Police Service in 2024, including its response to an encampment at the University of Calgary last May and the death of Jon Wells, a Blood Tribe member and accomplished rodeo competitor who died in police custody in September.
"It would be more useful if the Calgary Police Service was a little bit more proactive in these kinds of higher profile incidents," said King, acknowledging that the circumstances around Wells' death remain unclear and are still being investigated by the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team.
When asked about those cases after the presentation, interim police chief Katie McLellan said she didn't "want to speak about any specific case" but highlighted the work being done by the Calgary Police Service to engage with different communities.
"It's for us to reflect and ask the why, the how come, the what, and how can we train better? How can we be better? How can we change our policies, and what kind of additional engagement that we need to have to ensure that everyone is kept safe?"
The report indicates that the highest percentage of people that police used force against last year were white (43 per cent), followed by members of the Indigenous (18 per cent), Black (11 per cent) and non-Indigenous, non-Black communities (nine per cent).
While white people were the subjects of the highest percentage of incidents, the report highlights disproportionate representation of non-white people in cases involving use of force: the percentage of Indigenous and Black peoples in those figures is substantially greater than their representation in the city's general population.
