Edmonton’s Councillor Dave Loken, REACH Edmonton’s WrapED Project Manager Holly Hallborg, Edmonton Police Service’s Sgt Tracey Ward traveled to Vancouver to meet with Vancouver’s Chief of Police Adam Palmer, and municipal staff to learn first-hand about crime prevention strategies.
Press Release
Edmonton and Surrey visit Vancouver to share community safety, crime prevention strategies
Edmonton and Surrey delegates will visit Vancouver for an inter-municipal exchange on strategies to prevent crime through social development, November 3-4.
The exchange will allow Edmonton’s Councillor Dave Loken, REACH Edmonton’s WrapED Project Manager Holly Hallborg, Edmonton Police Service’s Sgt Tracey Ward and municipal staff to meet with Vancouver’s Acting Mayor Raymond Louie, Vancouver’s Chief of Police Adam Palmer, and municipal staff to learn first-hand about crime prevention strategies.
“Municipalities play a key role in reducing crime and enhancing community safety,” says CMNCP co-chair Christiane Sadeler.
The focus of the exchange will be strategies that already exist in Vancouver such as the health and safety for sex workers and prevention of sexual exploitation program, community policing centres and supervised injection facilities. Delegates will discuss ways to apply the accumulated knowledge on how to effectively prevent crime within their own municipality. Delegates from Edmonton and Surrey will discuss their strategies for increasing investment in prevention and ways to measure success, with Surrey providing an overview of their recently launched Public Safety Strategy.
The inter-municipal exchange will focus on achieving goals related to addressing priorities at the local and community level, sharing knowledge and data, sustaining funding for programs and networks, as well as increasing and sustaining public engagement.
The Canadian Municipal Network on Crime Prevention (CMNCP) is a network of 17 municipalities representing over 30% of Canada’s population that is working towards greater investment in tackling the root causes of crime and violence. CMNCP is committed to the greater use of effective and collaborative crime prevention strategies.
In partnership with crime prevention specialists at the University of Ottawa and with the financial support and collaboration of Public Safety Canada, CMNCP has launched the “Building Municipal Capacity to Harness Evidence to Prevent Crime” project. The aim of this project is to foster the capacity of municipalities to use evidence to prevent crime and to engage in comprehensive community safety strategies. The inter-municipal exchanges contribute to this goal.
“In 2016, we have significant knowledge about what has been proven to prevent crime. By investing the equivalent of 10% of the $22 billion currently spent on policing, courts and corrections in effective crime prevention, we can reduce crime by a further 50%,” says Professor Irvin Waller from the University of Ottawa.
For more information on CMNCP or the inter-municipal exchanges, please visit safercities.ca or contact CMNCP managing consultant Felix Munger.
