Q&A: Edmonton police Chief Warren Driechel says he doesn't regret public criticism of plea deal

For the first time in 20 years, Edmonton’s police chief is a local hire.

When Warren Driechel officially stepped into the top role, it came after nearly three decades with the Edmonton Police Service. The chief’s predecessor, Dale McFee, said before he stepped down that he wanted to see the next leader of EPS come from within. The force hasn’t seen a new chief named from its own ranks since former EPS chief Fred Rayner was hired in 2004.

As the new chief takes the reins, he sat down with CBC News to talk about his priorities for the job, and a major controversy that marked the beginning of his tenure.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You’ve been an officer in Edmonton for a long time. What’s the biggest change you’ve seen in terms of addressing crime?

We've moved to a city of 1.2 million people and that creates a lot of infrastructure challenges. Moving around the city is not as easy as it used to be, so from a policing perspective, how are we responding to calls? How quickly can we respond? Where do we need our police?

The cyberworld, cybercrime, your social media presence, all those things have really impacted how investigations can get done. The world has expanded exponentially in terms of how people can connect, so your criminal element is using those kind of methods.

You look at the seriousness of the drug problem in the city of Edmonton, in the province, in Canada, North America — 30 years ago, the drugs that were on the street were not as lethal, not as damaging.… The people that are really in need and those highly addicted individuals, how do we support them? How do we respond to them?

Last year, former chief Dale McFee said he thinks one of the biggest challenges facing the new chief is navigating politics. Do you see that, or what’s your take on the difficulty of that?

It’s been an eye-opener to me for sure. I mean, it's a very political position. I don't see myself as a politician, don't want to be a politician, but I think it's important to understand how the politics work.

I think one of the things coming into this role was to try to show a little humility, and work with our partners, not be so oppositional, and try to figure out how do we all work together to solve some of these community safety problems?

It was just a few days before the announcement that you were taking the chief role that the letter came out addressing the plea agreement for the case of the death of a child, and EPS asking provincial officials to intervene in that. We’ve seen that get pretty significant criticism: that this is potentially against the Charter, this is outside the role of police, this is interference in the justice system.

Do you still see that as the right thing to do?

I've learned since, there's two sides to every story for sure.… It's hard to appreciate the demands on the Crown as well. Everything that we deal with, they eventually see.

I recognize a lot of the criticism was about [how] prosecutorial discretion sits with the Crown — [I] don't disagree. But what we wanted to know was, is there something we could do differently, is there something that occurred within the investigation that led to this?

The Crown, there [are some people no longer in] their positions. But even prior to that, we were sitting down and talking about how we repair this. We were talking about putting together a meeting between both leadership teams at the Edmonton Police Service and the region’s prosecutions, so we can just have a common understanding of what’s going on with each party.

I often hear from the [EPS] membership — and again, I explained this to the Crown, and they didn't even realize this at the time — our members are starting to say, “Why bother? Why would I bother charging? Because it's not going to get prosecuted anyway.” So you can start to see this whole erosion of the whole system, and that's what I think we're hoping to prevent.

Do you think that prosecutors should be taking police cues or police direction when it comes to how they’re handling cases?

Not cues, but I think it's working together. When we look at some of these files — and this one was no different — we work with the Crown ahead of time.

When we know something and then six months later, the opinion changes or the information that we're led to believe changes, I think it's challenging for us.

So I don't believe it's about providing cues to the Crown, it's just creating a more cohesive work environment between the two organizations to accomplish what we hope to in this, it’s that accountability and that justice is found, especially for this victim.

Do you regret going public with those concerns rather than handling this with the Crown and EPS internally?

No, and I've been asked this. I think given the set of circumstances and the time and where we were at with that one, probably would do it again, yes.

That was going to trial within a matter of days, and if that plea bargain was there, it pretty well closes the door — due to double jeopardy, we're now done. So we just wanted to force the issue and really talk about: let's get to the table and figure out why these things are happening.

A year from now, what do you hope to have accomplished?

The one thing I think I really focus on is perception of safety in the city. People don't feel safe. Some of the feedback we get through our public engagement, we hear it. I've heard it secondhand, especially recently through the [municipal] election.

Our goal is to try to reduce a lot of the demand on the service and have our members have more time to be visible and proactive in these communities where we hear [about] crime.

People don't feel comfortable downtown because of the disorder. They see some of the open-air drug use and they see some of the encampments or vagrancy or whatever it is you want to call it. And people have conflated this into crime.

At the end of the year, hopefully next year, people start to say, “Yeah, we're feeling safer in this city.”