'Reality of being in a dense urban centre': Oliver residents respond to Edmonton police crime stats report

The Edmonton Police Service released its stats on crime in Edmonton in 2022 last week, and the numbers painted a picture of a high rate of crime downtown.

Police say calls for service downtown increased by 2.6 per cent from 2021 to 2022, up 830 calls.

Criminal incidents downtown jumped 7.7 per cent, up 1,153 incidents, and violent criminal incidents went up 8.4 per cent, or by 247 incidents.

The neighbourhoods included as part of downtown by police are downtown, Central McDougall, McCauley, Boyle Street, Oliver, and Queen Mary Park.

But the president of the Oliver Community League says the numbers don't correlate with what residents are seeing in that region.

"We're biased, but life in Oliver has still been excellent for a lot of our residents. We're still able to go out and participate in the community," Robyn Paches told CTV News Edmonton on Monday, but he admits some residents have concerns.

"I do hear from some residents that some of them don’t quite feel as comfortable or safe doing that as they used to."

"What we’ve heard is a mixture of things. People noticing open air drug use, more noticeable instances of interactions with houseless people."

Paches says Oliver is an inclusive community and the league is working on messaging around such encounters.

"What is the difference between feeling unsafe and uncomfortable? Sometimes you may feel a little uncomfortable seeing somebody, say using drugs and on the street, but that doesn’t mean that person is immediately going to be causing any harm to yourself."

He says the community league acts as a conduit, putting people in touch with the social support they need when they're in crisis.

"We don’t want to create this aura of fear or uncomfortableness around that. It's a reality of being in a dense urban centre, and we want to support the best we can."

Paches adds residents who do witness violent crimes should call police and says residents need to be savvy about property crime.

"People in the core have had to be a lot more diligent when protecting your belongings, not leaving things in your vehicles, being smart about what you leave on your balcony, and I’ve heard a lot of parking garage break and enters as well."

He says it's part of living in a community with such a high population.

"We have over 18,000 members in our community. That’s very different than some of the couple block by couple block communities that are in the suburbs."

It's a sentiment Coun. Anne Stevenson agrees with.

Stevenson represents Ward O-day'min, which encompasses all of the neighbourhoods in the downtown crime stats report.

"Looking at downtown specifically, those statistics, what stood out to me is that they weren't provided per population," she said on Monday. "So recognizing that the six neighbourhoods that were included in that, they have the densest neighbourhoods, the highest population, so when you're looking at absolute numbers, we would always expect those to be a bit higher by virtue of the higher population."

An Oliver resident herself, Stevenson says she feels safe downtown.

"I feel very safe. I often walk through downtown from city hall at night on my own, and am comfortable doing that."

"Other people have had incidents that have made them feel very unsafe, and those are very valid, those are very true. When we look at data though, we want to understand if they're very typical."

She's urging people to consider the absolute numbers.

"If you think about the tens of thousands of Edmontonians that are downtown every single day, I think keeping that in mind as well in terms of the overall number of people that are being impacted."

But she admits there's still work to be done.

"Safety is paramount, everyone needs to feel safe in their city, and we have to continue working towards that."

With files from CTV News Edmonton's Jeremy Thompson.