Border City PROspectives

now becky um we have seen a difference in downtown Like when I talk to people who work downtown and, you know, notwithstanding what happened down here the other day and targeted shootings happen all the time and in a lot of communities.

But we have seen a change in downtown.

Have we not? Like when I talk to people who work downtown, it's like, oh, it's night and day since they took the benches up.

But the other thing is they have now two officers that work directly with the all tree.

Where did this idea come from?

The city of Lloydminster.

They approached me, I believe, in the spring, and they wanted to do the ENU team, Enforcement Navigation Unit.

And it just kind of came from there.

So Joy, that ran our Home Base program.

So Home Base is housing first.

We house homeless people, or people are at risk of being homeless.

I call her my chihuahua.

She's just the coolest woman you've ever met.

She's just this little thing, but man, can she get stuff done and just incredibly knowledgeable about the resources that are available and about people.

And she loves people so, so much.

And anyways, so she she chose to move to the Innu team.

And so her and the peace officer are around forever.

almost 40 hours a week there around downtown and great success.

We updated our information.

Data is so important.

And so we have this very long spreadsheet.

So we ask them all the things, how did we end up here? What are your struggles? What do you want? What do you envision for yourself? What are your dreams? How can we help you? That kind of stuff.

And I think there's 61 or 62 unique individuals that they've had contact with over the summer.

And we've driven people to different cities for detox or treatment and taken some people back to where their homes are and their community and families are and all just different kinds of success.

And so I also think downtown is improving.