Calgary Police Chief Rick Hanson, pictured at police headquarters in Calgary on Wednesday, says Islamic and Somali communities are asking police for help identifying high-risk youths.Todd Korol/The Globe and Mail
From its worst mass murder to a deadly shooting on New Year's Day, Calgary has been recently rocked by major crimes. Police Chief Rick Hanson talks reality and prevention with Allan Maki.
With a population of 1.2 million, has Calgary become a dangerous place to live?
We had the Brentwood homicide [five young adults were stabbed to death at a house party] then the Nathan O'Brien, Alvin and Kathryn Liknes homicide [their bodies have yet to be located]. But those are truly one-offs. Those are events that happen once in a career. It's not like it's indicative of a trend. It's not at all. These things happen in cities and unfortunately those events happened in Calgary.
Is there part of you saying in some ways we let down the community because it's our job to protect people? Sure, that crosses your mind. You'd like to think in a perfect world we could prevent a lot from happening. But the reality is you can never prevent what is unpredictable … Thank God they are rare in Canada still.
The suspect charged in the Brentwood stabbings is the son of a Calgary detective. How do you respond to claims the police should not have been leading the investigation because of a perceived conflict of interest?
The worst thing you can do to jeopardize the integrity of an investigation is suddenly bring in outsiders who have no knowledge of what we've done, how we're doing it, what methods we used to investigate and throw them in the middle of an investigation. If you're looking to create a vulnerability in a prosecution down the road, that's how you do it. For those that say, '[The police] can't investigate objectively,' well, they don't know the professionalism of this organization.
Calgary was a jumping-off point for a handful of Islamic extremists. Parliament Hill shooter Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was here for a short time. Then there was the New Year's Day shooting death of a Somalia male and an unrelated second murder the next day. Have you reached out to these communities and offered help?
When it comes to radicalization, it's even more important today that communication occurs between police services and the public.
We met with the Islamic community in December. We met with the Somali community last week in regards to some of the issues surrounding the recent homicides.
What those communities are saying is, 'Help us in identifying those high-risk kids, or work with the kids and their families before they turn to gangs, before they start getting into serious trouble where someone winds up shot or someone winds up spending the rest of their life in jail.'
What has changed in your 30 years of police work?
It is the trans-national nature of crime now. Gangs are connected provincially and internationally. As criminals, they wouldn't hesitate to: go to Vancouver, commit a crime; go to Calgary, commit a crime; to Toronto, commit crime, then go home to Halifax. We look at what happens in other cities and ask, if that happened in Calgary what would our response be? It has caused us to build a relatively large, techno-crime/cybercrime area.
We have 16 officers now involved because technology plays such a big role in virtually every serious crime.
Are you a fan of all the police dramas on television?
If there's one thing that's a huge impediment to policing today it's the firmly held belief by some people that there's a magical DNA machine that recreates crime, and all you have got to do is go: 'The magic DNA machine has determined this guy is responsible. Let's just go and arrest him.'
There are people who think it is as simple as that. They don't understand collecting forensic evidence is but a single piece of an investigation.
We need people to step forward as witnesses. We need to ensure all the pieces of an investigation are adequately done such that the Crown feels 100-per cent-confident moving it forward.
Unfortunately, those crime shows create a false impression of what policing is all about.
This interview has been edited and condensed.