The Windsor Police Service is hoping they can help community partners get a foothold in one downtown apartment building to help cut down on a high volume of calls to police.
Police say approximately 75 per cent of the calls for service to the apartment complex at 920 Ouellette Avenue are non-criminal in nature, including well-being checks, ambulance assistance requests, and non-violent persons in crisis.
Deputy Chief Jason Crowley says he's been on the job for 30 years, and 920 Ouellette Avenue has been an area of concern for the majority of his career.
"The dynamics have changed over the years, just as Glengarry has. There's no answer why, I'm sure, but it's definitely been on the radar, but when we look at our data that we're very reliant upon, it's evident that this is something we need to turn our attention to," he says.
As part of a "high-visibility initiative," officers with the Problem-Oriented-Policing, or POP Unit, already conducted a focused enforcement initiative inside the building on Dec. 16 and Dec. 17.
The enforcement resulted in the execution of two arrest warrants for charges of drug trafficking and assault.
Members of the Nurse Police Team and Crisis Response Team will also be conducting a needs assessment in the building along with the sustained police presence into 2025, but the long-term goal is to allow various community partners, such as Windsor Regional Hospital, Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, Community Housing Corporation, and the City of Windsor, to take over and address the needs of residents.
Deputy Chief Jason Crowley says the majority of the calls to police are more geared toward human and health services.
"We feel that by teaming up with our partners, we're better able to service the people that need those kinds of services and, at the same time, free up police resources to answer police calls," he says.
Crowley says they're not just trying to reduce the reliance on police and police calls.
"We're looking to that immediate connection to the services that people require that people are not able to get or they're not getting because some of the people in that building are not as mobile as they would like to be and don't have access to these services," he says. "To me, that's success, when we're able to connect people to these services and also free up police resources."
This focused effort by police follows a similar initiative in Windsor's Glengarry neighbourhood, which saw police set up an office in one apartment building while partnering with community agencies to address the top place for violent crime in the city.
Since that initiative launched at the end of August, Chief Jason Bellaire says that crimes against people are down 32 per cent in the neighbourhood, crimes against property are also down 10 per cent, drug crimes are down 30 per cent, and cases of intimate partner violence are down 34 per cent, with the Glengarry neighbourhood identified as the top geographic location in the city for IPV cases in Windsor.