Edmonton police create Community Solutions Accelerator with aim to reduce crime

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The precious metals inside catalytic converters are enticing thieves to steal the devices off cars and trucks, and sell them as scrap metal. Edmonton, alongside other Canadian cities, has experienced a major uptick of the thefts. Vehicles in industrial areas, auto dealerships and hotel parking lots have been especially targeted.

Edmonton Police Service Chief Dale McFee has cast a weary eye at the 10,000 thefts and robberies his officers respond to each year – including dozens each month involving the exhaust emission control devices – and has watched the continued strain on overburdened police resources and the courts. He has decided something has to change.

Throughout his career, the long-time police officer and former Saskatchewan civil servant has shown a willingness to try something new. Now, he’s embracing technologies such as amalgamated data and artificial intelligence to address what he says are the interconnected challenges of crime, addictions, homelessness and mental health.

“The tools that we have now are different than they were 10 years ago, five years ago and certainly 20 years ago. But we’re still acting in the same way we did 20 years ago, and we’re wondering why it’s not working,” Chief McFee said in an interview.

This month, he and the Edmonton Police Foundation announced the creation of the Community Solutions Accelerator, a business-minded approach to the most predictable and deep-rooted problems police face. Instead of throwing more scarce public money at problems, Chief McFee said, he wants entrepreneurs to try to find novel solutions.

Modelled on business programs that provide mentorship and give financial and technical resources to startups in exchange for equity, the accelerator has been created to help develop products that could help police, social and health services do their work. And the Edmonton Police Chief wants the technology developed to be commercialized, providing business opportunities for both Albertans and entrepreneurs further afield.

He and the foundation are asking questions such as whether law enforcement could use AI to piece together data for clues in finding missing people, or front-line police officers could be given technology to help them to do cursory mental-health assessments. In the first announced project, Alcanna Inc., one of the country’s largest liquor retailers, is offering a grant of $500,000 to go toward technological solutions for the burgeoning problem of liquor store thefts.

“We always think about how we can’t do things, versus what’s actually the art of the possible,” he said.

This is not the first time Chief McFee has gone trail-blazing. As the police chief in the small city of Prince Albert, Sask., Chief McFee was a driving force behind transplanting a creative, community-based policing model to Canada from Glasgow, Scotland.

In this Hub program, a group of local service providers – police, educators, social services workers, doctors and others – meet regularly to discuss emerging community concerns. Once at-risk residents are identified by the group, they act as both an early warning system and rapid-intervention team.

Crime rates dropped significantly in Prince Albert, and the program has been replicated in other communities across Canada in the past decade. After leaving that police force, Chief McFee worked as deputy minister of corrections and policing in Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Justice, where part of his focus was government data. He was a contender for the job of Toronto police chief in 2015.

The plan for Edmonton’s accelerator likely would have never come about if Chief McFee hadn’t left the government of Saskatchewan and started as police chief in Alberta’s capital city in early 2019. It also likely wouldn’t have happened if Ashif Mawji, a venture capitalist focused on technology, wasn’t chairman of the Edmonton Police Foundation. The idea came through conversations between the two men.

“Technology can be a great enabler, if used correctly,” Mr. Mawji says. “In the past policing – because it’s not allowed to fail – has been very conservative in its approach.”

The idea for the accelerator was born. A key element will be combining data from the separate but related worlds of health care, social services, child welfare and police, and asking tech entrepreneurs what they can do to improve systems and data use and sharing. The decision was made that the accelerator will be wholly owned and operated by the Edmonton Police Foundation, separate from the Edmonton Police Service.

Mr. Mawji has mobilized corporate support from the University of Alberta, ATB Financial and Motorola Solutions Canada. Telus Corp., another partner, is donating space in downtown Edmonton for the lab. The partners will contribute funding, IT infrastructure, technical support, research expertise, marketing and mentorship. The actual venture fund will be launched in short order.

Privacy and the commercialization of individuals’ data are potential concerns. But Mr. Mawji said police service members with security clearance will handle the most sensitive data. They will create data models and make it anonymized.

Chief McFee added that some elements of policing will never change. There will continue to be a focus on getting organized crime and gangs off the street, he said.

And both men acknowledge some of the accelerator projects will fail. There are risks. But over all, they say they believe they will able to make a difference.

The Edmonton Chief said if he could find means of getting just 20 per cent of the people who regularly fall through the cracks out of the criminal justice system – and instead into the mental-health or social programs they need – “that’s a lot of better outcomes, and that saves a bundle of money.”