The biggest enforcement challenge for Thunder Bay city police is trying to pull ahead of the gangs, guns and drugs that flow steadily into the city from southern Ontario.
“We work very closely with our teams here,” Thunder Bay Police Chief Darcy Fleury said.
“We have to work closely with all of our services in the province and across the country, but we have to have that concerted effort and really focus on people who are organized. They come from organized backgrounds, from down south more often than not.”
He added that they have to keep focusing on that and really try to get to the core of where it is.
“I mean, we can pick out the street dealers all the time. We really need to get to the suppliers and the traffickers, and that’s what we really have to focus on, which is a big task,” he said.
“It’s a challenge. It’s not like it was a few years ago, and that’s something that we need to continue to work on.”
Thunder Bay has proven to be a lucrative market for selling illegal drugs simply because drug dealers can make more money there than they can in southern Ontario.
“Their drugs cost more here than they do down south. So that’s worth them coming up here to sell their goods,” Fleury said.
Drug sales go hand in hand with a growing mental health and addiction crisis, and Fleury says city police need to make sure its impact team works closely with Mental Health Canada.
“And it’s a very good program,” he said, adding that they are expanding it this year.
“This is great, because this is provincial funding, and it is very important for us that the province has recognized that there is a need for us. We apply annually, and this year, they accepted us, expanding again.”
Fleury added that this is important because it all goes back to the capacity, and having the ability to take somebody who may be having a mental health episode and treating them through the mental health program instead of it being an enforcement issue, where they are not receiving the treatments they need.
“It also helps when the impact team triages the person,” he added. “If this person is having a mental health episode, we need to take them to the hospital, or if this person is not having a mental health episode, and we can take them right to the cells.”
Both police and paramedics are tied up waiting at the hospital with people, causing a reduction in service.
Addiction issues prompt a need for money to purchase drugs. When there is no money, there is an increase in home, property and retail business robberies.
