Safer Calgary
Creating Safe Public Spaces
The Calgary Police Service, along with our City of Calgary and social agency partners, is committed to enhancing public safety in areas identified as hot spots for social disorder and crime, particularly downtown and along transit routes.
Through focused operations and supportive initiatives, we aim to address issues such as open-air drug use and consumption, drug trafficking, and other dangerous and unsafe behaviours. The CPS will do what we can to enforce existing laws and bylaws, but enforcement is just one piece of a complex puzzle. We are working closely with and relying on our partners to help address the root causes of the behaviour.
Our goal is simple:
Strengthen Our City Together for a Safer Calgary
Why this matters
Public spaces are meant to be safe, respectful and welcoming for everyone, and right now, our community is telling us they don’t feel safe in our public spaces.
This year, Calgary is at a six-year high for violence downtown, representing a 20 per cent increase over the five-year average.
Unwanted guests, disturbances, indecent acts and drug calls for service account for roughly 75 per cent of disorder calls in 2025 in the city centre.
We expect public spaces to be used for their intended purpose, and will enforce these expectations where necessary. There is no place in our city for behaviours that jeopardize safety or create fear.
While compassion and services lead our approach, enforcement remains a critical component of maintaining public safety.
City Centre 2025 Statistics
Violent Crime - 3rd Quarter
Violent crime within the Centre City increased 14% compared to average in the 2nd Quarter although some of this increase can be attributed to the inclusion of 2020 (pandemic) data in the 5-year calculation. The rest of the city saw a small decline in violence in the 2nd Quarter.
Consistent with the 1st Quarter trend, six-year highs of both assaults and street robberies were recorded within the Centre City (the rest of the city also noted a six-year high of assaults). All Centre City communities (with the exception of Beltline) saw more assaults than average this quarter.
Violent Crime – Year to Date
Violence in the Centre City reached a high in 2025 compared to the same time-period over the past five years. Notably, violence reached its highest levels during the past three years across both Centre City and the remaining areas of the city. Almost all communities within the Centre City note above average violence year-to-date.
Assaults and street robberies reached six-year highs in 2025 in the Centre City (the rest of the city also saw a six-year highs of assault). Almost all communities in the Centre City saw above average volumes of both assaults and street robberies.
Disorder – 3rd Quarter
The Centre City saw a notable increase of disorder in the 3rd Quarter reaching the highest volume during the sixyear period. The rest of city saw a 7% decline of disorder.
Disturbances within the Centre City reached a six-year high this quarter (+28% above average, 220 additional calls). Drug and noise complaint calls also reached six-year highs.
A significant increase was noted within Beltline this quarter (notably more unwanted guests and disturbances than average). Downtown East Village (DTEV) also saw more disorder activity driven largely by increases of disturbances; however, most disorder call types were above average as well.
Disorder - Year to Date
Public-generated disorder was 19% above average within the Centre City year-to-date in 2025 while the rest of the city saw a 9% reduction. Unwanted guests, disturbances, indecent acts and drug calls for service account for roughly 75% of disorder calls in 2025 to date in the Centre City, all reaching six-year record highs compared to previous years at this time.
The most notable increases of disorder activity within the Centre City in 2025 to date are within Beltline, Downtown Commercial Core and Downtown East Village.
Data Notes: Data sourced from Sentry, October 2025. Centre City includes six communities: Beltline, Chinatown, Downtown Commercial Core, Downtown East Village, Downtown West End and Eau Claire. Occurrences with unassigned geography are excluded. Data compiled by Corporate Data and Analytics.
What we’re doing
Through focused operations and resources, we are committed to:
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Enhanced collaboration
Calgary Police Service officers, Community Safety and Transit Public Safety peace officers, and community outreach support partners, have partnered for an integrated response.
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Connecting people to services
Calgary has many resources for those in need. We remain committed to leading with compassion and connecting individuals with the right supports.
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Targeted patrols and enforcement
We are concentrating patrol efforts in areas where data shows higher levels of social disorder.
Since January 2024, The City of Calgary has added:
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50 new CPS officers
focused especially in the downtown core as a result of a 2024 grant from the province.
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65 new Transit peace officers
with 45 now patrolling across the transit system at any given time.
With these added resources, there has been:
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12 per cent fewer downtown safety response calls
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60 per cent fewer overdose responses from the Calgary Fire Department
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Improvement in feelings of safety
with 75 per cent of Calgarians now saying they feel safe, according to recent public surveys.
Calgary Police Service and partner resources
The CPS and its partner agencies have resources for ongoing community engagement/outreach and enforcement across the city. These teams include:
- Patrol officers: patrol officers are frontline CPS members who respond to calls for service when individuals call 911 or the non-emergency line.
- Community Resource Officers (CROs): CROs work within specific communities to build relationships and address community-specific needs. They act as a resource for local concerns and attend community events, and liaise with community associations and businesses.
- Police and Crisis Team (PACT): a partnership between Alberta Health Services and the CPS that responds to situations involving individuals experiencing a mental health, addictions or psycho-social crisis. The team offers mental health assessment, support and/or consultation in crisis situations and can arrange urgent psychiatry assessments and referrals.
- CPS Community Engagement Response Teams (CERTs): CERTs are teams of officers focused on addressing high crime areas and social disorder. CERT officers work with social service agencies to connect individuals experiencing mental health and addictions issues with supports.
- Social, Mental Health, Addiction Referral Team (SMART): SMART operates out of the CPS Arrest Processing Unit and uses a new approach to support vulnerable and at-risk individuals who have been detained with an opportunity to connect with, or be referred to, appropriate social, mental health and addiction supports.
Safety hubs
Two centralized spaces have been developed in the downtown core and surrounding area to develop co-ordinated and integrated responses to incidents and issues.
East Village Safety Hub
The East Village Safety Hub opened in summer 2022 and is a partnership between Calgary Municipal Land Corporation (CMLC), The City of Calgary, the Calgary Police Service and Alpha House Society’s HELP Team. It offers a space for police and social agencies to collaborate and share information about community concerns or incidents and take the most appropriate action to response.
Location: Lower level of the St. Louis Hotel, 230 Eighth Ave. S.E.
Note: the East Village Safety Hub is not a reporting location and is not staffed to receive walk-in traffic. To access police non-emergency services in the downtown area, visit the CPS Community Counter and Downtown Safety Hub.
CPS Community Counter and Downtown Safety Hub
In November 2024, The City of Calgary and the CPS moved the Stephen Avenue Safety Hub to a new location downtown, to continue providing a centralized location for unformed officers and to provide a downtown front counter for members of the public.
At this location, the public can report non-emergency police matters, including non-injury collisions and lost/found property, or speak with police officers for general information and guidance about crime and safety issues.
Location: 119 Sixth Ave. S.W.
Hours: Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Offender Management and High System Users
Through our operations, we have learned there are a small number of people who have the biggest impact on the perceptions of safety in hot spot areas. These individuals, known as High System Users (HSUs), disproportionately utilize police and transit resources, often generating a high volume of repeat calls for service in public spaces, downtown and on transit.
Individuals identified as High System Users often experience complex mental health and addiction issues, and are generally resistant to changing their behaviour, which is often disruptive, unsettling and results in people feeling unsafe.
In the CPS HSU program, eight dedicated coordinators identify individuals who frequently interact with police and transit services, and provide targeted interventions to support them.
The HSU program has shown measurable success in reducing recidivism and reconnecting individuals with supports. Over the past 18 months, 66 individuals have been identified as HSUs. Of these:
- 14 individuals are now inactive in the program, including:
- Six reconnected with family supports
- Three who have ceased offending entirely following engagement with program resources
- 52 individuals remain under active monitoring
Even with the program’s success, the small number of individuals responsible for a disproportionate amount of social disorder highlights the need for enhanced offender management strategies, including bail reform, access to justice information and data interoperability between local law enforcement with analytical support.
Partner agencies and community supports
The CPS is working with several community partners to ensure an integrated response to community safety, including:
Safer Calgary operations
The CPS has led focused enforcement operations under the Safer Calgary initiative that are designed to enhance public safety in high priority areas. Through targeted enforcement, strategic patrol deployments and compassionate supports, Safer Calgary aims to address social disorder and criminal activity to foster safe public spaces.
Operation CERTainty (February to April 2025 )
Operation CERTainty ran from February to April 2025. In this focused operation, CPS CERTs were partnered with peace officers from Calgary Community Safety and Calgary Transit Public Safety, along with community outreach supports.
Teams were deployed and directed through a CPS operational plan that encompassed a broader, data-led strategy to address crime and social disorder downtown and along transit routes.
Operation CERTainty results:
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75% Officer-generated
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Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA)
Of the 66 charges laid, more than 90 per cent were not prosecuted.
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The operation was accompanied by a drug trafficking investigation that resulted in 175 criminal charges laid against 28 individuals. Of those:
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97 per cent
had previous charges for trafficking
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72 per cent
had previous charges for possession for the purpose of trafficking
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97 per cent
had other charges before the courts at the time of arrest
Operation Order (November 2025)
Operation Order is an area-specific effort to enhance public safety in around the downtown core. Areas of focus are the East Village, Stephen Avenue and Century Gardens Park.
During the operation, Calgary Police Service officers and Calgary Transit peace officers will proactively engage with vulnerable persons, offenders, members of the public, business owners, business users and pedestrians, connecting them with supports and, where necessary enforcing bylaws as well as laws related to drug use, possession, trafficking and violent offences.
