Calgary’s downtown has for years been subjected to bonehead decisions by city council.

Among the looniest is as follows:

The big Victoria Park central police station was closed in 2017.

In 2018, the Sheldon Chumir safe injection site opened.

Alberta Health Services inflicted that site on the city. But city hall was totally unprepared for what happened next.

Crime, disorder and destruction erupted for years because there was no policing plan and little police presence in the crucial time when crime became endemic.

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Mayor Jeromy Farkas wants a new downtown police station, fully staffed with officers on the street to combat crime.

He promised that in the election campaign. So did his main competitor, Sonya Sharp.

On Monday, Farkas noted that Calgary is the only major city in Canada and the U.S. without police presence in the city centre.

The towers have hollowed out alarmingly in the past decade. Crime did not. The latest police report shows that downtown crime is the city’s highest.

Companies still operating in the core pay big for private security. Farkas says the downtown’s reputation prevents some businesses from locating there.

“I know that there’s a significant amount of business and activity that could be happening in Calgary’s downtown that isn’t, because of the perceptions around safety.”

With the support of 10 councillors before his motion goes to council, Farkas intends to move fast on a new police station.

“I don’t expect the station to be built by the end of this year, but I’m going to be challenging our administration and our council to deliver at least a groundbreaking by the end of the year,” he said.

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Where will it be? Farkas says the East Village is one option, although he isn’t wedded to it.

“This is supposed to be the crown jewel of the city, but the development is in some way stalled out by safety issues that many of the commercial tenants are facing.”

Ex-mayor Dave Bronconnier created a new tax credit system to get the East Village built out on some of the city’s most desirable riverside land.

The potential is still there. New pathway connections now link the area directly to Inglewood.

But the East Village is plagued by crime. No competent council should have allowed that to happen.

Instead, they made the problem worse, by closing the nearby Vic Park station.

Crime surges downtown aren’t new. Disorder soared nearly 20 years ago.

Office workers, especially women, couldn’t go out for a Stephen Avenue stroll without being harassed and even assaulted.

CEOs of big companies were furious. They threatened to pull out of the core if city hall didn’t act.

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Rick Hanson, then the police chief, eagerly wanted action. He got full authority after a 2008 meeting with Bronconnier and the business leaders.

“I remember one leader saying they were tired of it,” Hanson recalls. “They had to escort their female employees on the street. Nobody felt safe because of the open-air drug trafficking, the filth and the degradation.”

What happened next was first hopeful, then typically pathetic.

After policing was beefed up with provincial help, “crime diminished immediately, especially in regard to the violence and the drug trafficking,” Hanson says.

“And then some people on council started to say, you don’t need those cops because there’s no crime.

“And we said, ‘well, there’s no crime because we’ve got a highly visible police presence.’

“But they didn’t buy that theory. Then began the predictable, steady erosion of safety in the downtown.”

Today, Farkas says locating a station downtown is as important as completing the new Bearspaw South water line.

Inevitably, there will be gripes about unknown cost.

“I am willing to defend the expenditures every day of the week, every hour of the day, because this is absolutely necessary for Calgary’s long-term success,” Farkas said.

Get to it, city council.

Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald

X and Bluesky: @DonBraid

© Calgary Herald