SUNDRE – The municipality’s community peace officer reported having received a little more than 1,000 calls for service in 2023.
The 1,009 files included a wide variety of items ranging from traffic tickets and unsightly premises to homeless encampments and feeding deer, council heard earlier this year when the stats were presented.
Sam Zhao, Sundre’s peace officer, presented data from a detailed report that not only outlines all of the kinds of calls responded to, but also helps identify potential priorities to guide the decision-making process moving forward.
In 2023, the municipality employed one full-time community peace officer and also had one contracted animal control officer.
A community peace officer’s responsibilities entail both legislation pertaining to provincial acts including but not limited to animal protection, traffic safety, gaming, liquor and cannabis, provincial offences procedure, and trespass to premise, as well as municipal bylaws such as for cats and dogs, community standards, land use, noise, snow removal, traffic and unsightly premises.
The bulk of the officer’s time is consumed by following up on bylaw offences, which represented 56 per cent of violations with provincial offences making up the remaining 44 per cent.
Overall, 116 hours were dedicated to proactive traffic enforcement with 47 hours conducted outside of regular working hours. Another 127 hours were dedicated to proactive patrols, with 30 hours conducted outside of working hours. Council also heard that 28 patrols were conducted in the school zones.
“Everybody wants to know (the answer to) the question of how many tickets did we write,” Zhao said, eliciting a light round of laughter from council.
“That is not a stat that I like to track because it is not an accurate representation of the work that we are doing,” he said.
For example, a single parent with four kids who’s struggling to find the time to upkeep their yard or an elderly individual with mobility issues who is unable to shovel their snow and the peace officer is called out in response to a complaint, he asked if a ticket should be written up or instead perhaps a warning issued.
“What we do once we start tracking tickets, is the job becomes black and white,” he said. “(But) we work in the grey. There’s always more factors to what is in front of us.”
Taking each file on a case-by-case basis, Zhao said each individuals’ circumstances leading to the offence are considered, and discretion is subsequently used on making decisions such as whether to educate, issue a warning, pursue enforcement action, or maybe even do nothing at all.
Zhao also made unequivocally clear to council that a peace officer can only legally enforce matters that are specifically addressed through either provincial legislation or municipal bylaws.
“There’s a fine line between enforcement and harassment. If whatever we are enforcing is not listed and we don’t have authority to enact that enforcement action (under existing acts and bylaws), we are harassing people,” he said.
“A good example is when people feed deer around town. We don’t have anything that we can tell people not to do it,” he said.
Officers can educate all day long about why people should not feed the deer or any wildlife, but they cannot lawfully enforce anything, he said.
“That’d be harassment,” he said.
“What people also don’t realize is that every ticket is not just a ticket, every provincial ticket is a court case. Every single one,” he said, adding that all comes with a load of luggage as well.
As for bylaws that are in place, those most regularly being called in have to do with animals and parking, he said.
Under provincial statutes, the majority of infractions fall under traffic violations such as speeding, suspended licences, or drivers not wearing seat belts, he added.
But the peace officer also pointed out the Trespass to Premises Act, which deals with the homeless population in town, he said.
“Typically, this is more of a summertime problem,” he said. “But we do have – and it has been increasing – more and more people living in their cars in wintertime.”
Following his presentation, council had plenty of questions.
Coun. Chris Vardas wanted a better understanding of the difference between a directed patrol as opposed to a general patrol. Zhao said the former are in direct response to complaints received, while general patrols are when the officer hits the streets to be seen.
Coun. Jaime Marr inquired whether patrols included the trail system.
“We do walk the trails. But it can be done more efficiently,” said Zhao, adding a bike would certainly facilitate such patrols.
But it also depends on how much time and resources are available in a given week, he said.
“The trails are (patrolled), just not as frequently as I would like,” he added.
Coun. Owen Petersen asked if Fish and Wildlife officers could help deal with complaints about feeding deer.
“There’s no provincial legislation that bans you specifically from feeding the animals,” said Zhao.
Additionally, Fish and Wildlife more typically deal with potential problem animals such as bears and cougars, he said.
“They don’t really deal with deer,” he said.
Coun. Paul Isaac, who praised the peace officer for having “made a much more positive impact on our residents since you’ve come on because of how you’ve conducted your role in the job you have,” asked how people could be made more aware that bylaw responses are driven by complaints.
For example, some residents see bylaw violations but “don’t understand why they have to put a complaint in,” he said.
“How do you – how do we – bring that message to our residents,” the councillor said.
“In my opinion, before somebody calls me, they should probably go and talk to their neighbours,” said Zhao.
“I think that’s a big part of it, just talking to people because a lot of our calls deal with neighbour disputes,” he said.
Failing that, the recourse is to call to bylaw. But the peace officer also understood that some residents are reluctant to do that.
“A lot of people around town are hesitant to call me because of the size of the town,” he said. “They don’t want their neighbours to know that they’re the ones that called me.”
One good example is the people who walk their dogs off-leash on the local nature trails, which technically is prohibited by municipal bylaw.
“People don’t call because prominent members of the community do it, and they don’t want to put their name attached to it,” he said, adding that despite hearing about such instances in conversations, no one’s called in a complaint in an official capacity.
Petersen said that moving ahead in 2024, the town no longer has a contracted animal control service and asked if that responsibility would then fall onto Zhao’s shoulders.
“We have a bylaw officer that was hired to take on the level of service that was provided by our contracted animal control officer,” he said, adding they currently work part-time but will take on dog and other animal complaints.
Vardas also brought up the matter of cluttered properties, which he said he regularly receives questions about.
Tracked in bylaw statistics as unsightly properties, Zhao said these file typically require a very complicated, long-term solution.
“If you can call it a solution,” he said. “Because they’ve been hoarding and collecting these things for 20 years; it’s going to take a lot more than a conversation” to persuade them.
“And a lot of the times, people that are collecting all these items have mental health issues,” he added.
So while a bylaw officer could indeed issue a cleanup order, that approach takes time. And it’s not uncommon that people who own such properties simply don’t care and the matter ultimately ends up going to court, he said.
“And even if it went to court and the judge issued out an order, they (the owner) may or may not clean it up and then the municipality is responsible for that cleanup cost,” he said.
Mayor Richard Warnock wanted to know more about where Sundre stands concerning the homelessness situation, and sought a better understanding between the difference with the Petty Trespass Act and the Trespass to Premises Act.
Zhao said the Petty Trespass Act deals more with situations involving farms and agricultural properties where someone trespasses on a quarter section, while the Trespass to Premises Act involves individual private property like a business in town.
“As for the homeless conversation in town, is we do have homeless people in town; it’s kind of everywhere,” he said, adding the larger a municipality’s population, the greater the homeless population.
“Sundre is in a unique location where it’s between Red Deer and Rocky Mountain House,” he said, adding some people get dropped off in town.
The peace officer said he had found small encampments by the river, which were subsequently removed. Over the past summer, Zhao said there were between five to 10 individuals with no fixed address residing in the area.
“Homeless is not a good definition because there’s different kinds of homeless,” he said, adding there are for example pensioners who live out of their cars without bothering anybody while others put up makeshift shelters in the woods. Some even couch surf.
“It’s hard to define what homeless is, specifically,” he said. “But in the traditional sense, we do have encampments in the woods, and that’s why we’d like more patrols done on the trails.”
In a follow-up with the Albertan, Zhao said, “We’ve had three separate encampments that we’ve dismantled” this past summer.
The mayor also said calls he once received regularly regarding complaints about high school students at the parking lot near the skate park seemed to have stopped.
“With your school patrols that you’ve been doing, those calls have went away,” said Warnock, who presumed that was the result of an increase presence and asked if Zhao agreed.
But the peace officer modestly took no credit whatsoever and said every year brings a new batch of seniors at the high school.
“It’s an ongoing thing to keep up with,” said Zhao.
Council unanimously carried a motion approving the report for information.
