Lethbridge police ask residents for feedback and community policing priorities

The Lethbridge Police Service (LPS) want residents and local stakeholders to tell them what they think about how the service does business and how it spends taxpayermoney.

The service began surveying people over the phone on Saturdayin order to determine community priorities.

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Chief Rob Davis said that as LPSgears up for their upcoming budget cycle talksin the fall, they want the community to weigh in on what they're doing and what they should be doing.

"We have a number of strategies that we want to implement into the city, but it's important we have the community and stakeholder feedback to help us prioritize," he said. " We may think something's priority one, whereas citizensfeel item three might be priority one."

Davis says residents will be asked to rank previous police priorities.

"So, would that be traffic enforcement, say drug enforcement, dealing with mid-level crimes, foot patrol," he said.

Residents will also be asked how safe they feel in their communities, parks and other public spaces,and whether that feeling changes from day to night.

Farin Ellis a researcher and political scientist with Lethbridge College is heading the process.

He anticipates they'll interview more than a thousand people between now and next Thursday.

"The City of Lethbridge, when they conduct their satisfaction survey, [they hire]Ipsos-Reid to conduct 400 interviews, so we go well beyond that," he said. "These are extremely robust samples."

Farrin says the data will be analyzed and made public within a month of completion.

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