Lethbridge police hosting Social Disorder and Urban Crime Conference

The Lethbridge Police Service is hosting the 2024 Social Disorder and Urban Crime Conference. (CTV News)

LETHBRIDGE, ALTA. — Dozens of police officers and support workers have come to Lethbridge for the Social Disorder and Urban Crime Conference.

It's the first time a conference like this has been held in Alberta. The event was proposed and organized by Lethbridge Police Service (LPS) Sgt. Ryan Darroch.

“My vision of the event was to bring together different police services to kind of walk through what's working, what's not working and learn from each other’s successes and failures,” said Darroch.

The goal of the conference is to share what has and hasn't worked when dealing with addictions, mental health issues and crime.

Lethbridge has been hit hard by the opioid crisis. Despite a recent decline, the city leads Alberta in opioid deaths per capita with 64.7 per 100,000 population since the start of the year.

While Lethbridge may be impacted more than most municipalities, it's an issue many communities in western Canada are dealing with.

"It has been interesting to see what other organizations and police services are doing to be successful in this fight," Darroch said

"Not one of us has all the answers and I think I really learned that from. What I’ve learned through this process is that everyone has some value through their point of view.”

One of the biggest talking points at the conference is the rise of overdose deaths in public.

As recently as the second quarter of 2023, 59 per cent of overdose deaths in Lethbridge were in public spaces.

Local addiction advocates believe the closure of the Lethbridge supervised consumption site has been a factor.

“Anytime there's not a supervised consumption site, the whole city becomes an unsupervised consumption site and it leads to more deaths,” said Amber Jensen, the Lethbridge representative for Moms Stop the Harm.

Despite the challenges faced by cities across western Canada, there's optimism this conference can help spark positive change.

“As we've seen there is no one answer to all these problems that we're seeing in western Canada in relation to the drug crisis. And it's important to learn from other organizations to save ourselves time, money and wasted resources.”

The three-day conference will run until Wednesday.