Regina police chief addresses RM of Sherwood protest and overdoses on Evan Bray Show

Lorilee Davies, Regina’s police chief, joined The Evan Bray Show on Wednesday.

In a wide-ranging interview, Davies touched on protests and vandalism at the offices of the RM of Sherwood, overdose trends in the city, how the force maintains the mental health of its officers, confusion around street sweeping and more.

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Listen to the full interview with Davies or read the transcript below:

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

EVAN BRAY: Let’s talk about the RM of Sherwood, which was recently involved in a meeting to decide whether or not to approve this AI data center. There was a big protest there. Regina police were called to stand by and keep the peace. Since then, some graffiti has been sprayed on the building. There’s been a couple of texts wanting to know where that investigation is at.

DAVIES: We just received a copy of that report or that file Monday morning, so we’ve got officers assigned to investigate it. It’s still really early on, but suffice to say we’ll be gathering all available evidence that we can, and trying to hold those responsible accountable.

I’m going to throw a couple of questions at you. One coming from Ashton: “Where, in Regina, is it most common to see overdoses happening?” Geographically, are you able to pin that down?

DAVIES: Well, we actually are able to map it out, and all corners of the city do experience people suffering from addictions. Unfortunately, we do tend to see where people congregate, that might be where we might see more of those overdoses. Around service providers, potentially, but it is literally every corner of the city where we are responding to those calls.

There’s a text here from Kevin. He’s mentioning something I haven’t seen, but he says there’s a portable camera set up along Victoria Avenue at the back of the Home Depot building. Do we know who’s responsible for that? Why is it there? What is its purpose? Is that a city camera?

DAVIES: I don’t know. This is the first I’ve heard of it. Actually, I don’t think that it’s a Regina police camera, but certainly we can do some digging into that to figure out what that’s about. But it’s the first time I’m hearing of it.

And I’ll throw one more question your way from the text line. Cameron wants to know: “How do you deal with the mental fatigue of police officers interacting with the worst of society on a daily basis?”

DAVIES: Great question, and it’s not even just the worst of society, but people are literally calling you on their worst day. So our officers, obviously, are dealing with a lot of traumatic situations, a lot of death, unfortunately. We are actually just in the process of rolling out a mental health monitoring program for all of our front-line patrol officers. We will be expanding it to all of our police officers throughout the course of this year, but it is evidence-based. Officers provide a daily check-in in terms of their mental health. And the beauty of that is, when you take that 60 seconds to think about your mental health, you’re actually being intentional about it, and you can say “Oh, you know what? Actually I am having a bit of a hard time,” and it provides us with resources, but we have made huge investments in our wellness of our members. We have a psychologist on staff. We’ve invested in our integrated health and wellness program, and so I 100 per cent agree that has to be our top priority, and we are ensuring that we are taking good care of our members.

I was reading a document about the focus that the Regina Police Service has been doing on retail crime. I spoke with (Saskatoon police) chief Cam McBride yesterday about that as well. Can you talk about what that is and why that focus is necessary?

DAVIES: We’ve been hearing from a lot of our retails, from loss-prevention officers, that this is something that has become an issue, and so we work collaboratively with businesses, with loss prevention. We have patrol officers, we have plain-clothes officers, and about once a month we’re doing a big retail-theft blitz. And so we’re out in those stores. We’re arresting people. We’re holding people accountable. We just charged a couple of people with a huge number of offences. We tend to find that there are repeat offenders that are out doing that, but we’re hoping that being out there, being visible, will help curb some of that behaviour, because it is having a big impact on the bottom line of those retailers.

I know you were recently gathered in Ottawa with a number of police leaders from across Canada to talk with and help the government understand things they could do to make the job easier for police investigations. Can you touch on that?

DAVIES: Yeah, absolutely. We were talking about Bill C-22, which is essentially legislation that doesn’t give police greater powers or greater access to information, but actually streamlines the process for police to access information. So if you came to me and said “Hey, on my cell phone here, I received this disturbing message. I have a phone number. Can you investigate that?” We’re hoping that it will help us be able to request information from service providers that they can say “Yes, that information exists, that’s a customer of ours,” and then we would go about getting the proper judicial authorities. Right now, what happens is we might send a request to five different providers, and there’s no obligation for them to tell us that that information exists, which then kind of stalls the investigation. So I equate it to back in the days when we had a phone book, and there was a name and a phone number, and you could say, “OK, well, this is so-and-so’s phone number.” We don’t even have access to that basic information at this time, so really, it’s about streamlining the processes so that police can access that information with proper authority, just so that we can get our foot in the door for some of those investigations.

We were chatting with Lindsey Hoemsen, who’s the mastermind behind public information and communication for Regina police, and she mentioned the number of calls the Regina Police Service is getting right now saying “Someone stole my car,” when in fact, that’s not necessarily the case.

DAVIES: No, it’s not. So there’s street sweeping happening now. Thankfully the snow is melting. The city is getting out and doing some of that street sweeping now that the weather is co-operating. So what happens is, if your vehicle is parked on a street where that is taking place, vehicles are being towed, likely just around the corner, to facilitate that street-sweeping process. So I would say that if your car has gone missing, if there is street sweeping happening, check the area around to see if it’s been moved. And then after that, if it’s still missing, then give us a call, but likely it’s just been moved out of the way.

Some good advice there. Chief, I know you’re a big sports fan. How are you doing in your NHL Draft?

DAVIES: I am at the bottom of the list. I’m an Oilers fan. I took Connor McDavid. I had the first pick overall. As we all know, he hasn’t had a lot of points so far, but I am confident they’re going to bounce back, win this series, and I will, at some point, be at the top of that pool.

OK, that’s a bold prediction right there from the Regina chief of police. Lorilee, thanks for coming in.

DAVIES: Always a pleasure.