Countdown on, outgoing Edmonton police chief looks back on 2024 and 'ridiculous' political influence on policing

Outgoing police chief reflects on 2024 Edmonton Police Chief Dale McFee is set to leave his post after a contentious and controversial final year on the job. David Ewasuk reports.

Politics — not unsolved arson cases or guns or public safety — is the thing Edmonton Police Service chief Dale McFee is most worried about as he leaves for a job in the Alberta government.

Some of those issues were top concerns in previous years, but the outgoing chief told CTV News Edmonton in a recent year-end interview that EPS has made good progress on many fronts.

"If we can continue our trend, we probably could end up with a lower crime rate than we've ever had since 2013," McFee said, citing a decrease in shootings by 46 per cent over 2024 and attributing the overarching drop in crime, in part, to dismantling several established homeless camps last winter.

"Anybody that (sic) doesn't think that the stuff in the encampments and the gangs and stuff was contributing, they're not reading the headlines and they're not following the plot," he commented.

And on the topic of three active arson extortion investigations, he pointed to several arrests in one and "pretty good leads" in another.

"I'm pretty happy with the progress that we made on that file. Obviously, it'd be better if we could actually stop them, but part of stopping them is get(ting) a few of these guys in custody."

No, what is at the forefront of McFee's mind as his tenure as Edmonton's 23rd police chief comes to an end, what appears to haunt him from those six years, and what he believes is the biggest challenge facing Edmonton's 24th police chief, is a "real conflict" between city council and Edmonton Police Commission, fueled to some extent by critical rhetoric online.

"The relationship that I've had to navigate politically is something ... I have never seen it like this. This is absolutely wild. It's ridiculous," he said.

Sitting down for the annual interview on Dec. 4, one week before his new posting was revealed, McFee told CTV News Edmonton that a bleed through of politics into policing needs to stop.

"Maybe I should have intervened before, but bottom line is: We know what we're doing. Bottom line is: We're not being heavy handed. Bottom line is: If we do something wrong, there's a discipline process."

He used the homeless camp clearings as an example. So far as EPS knows, no one has died in a homeless camp fire since police shut down the largest camps. Looking also at the number of people evicted from the camps who were connected to social services — 40 per cent, according to the chief — and the support the public has expressed in EPS' surveys, McFee considers the camp shutdowns a success. He would do them the same again, if needed.

"Different, if we went in July," he conceded. "But we're coming off the heels of people burning to death alive. That's not something where people need to sit around and talk and say, 'What is the way to do that?'"

He continued, "Somebody's got to make a decision that we're going to do it. Unfortunately, we take all the rap for that, but you know, that's OK if that's what's needed to make our community safer."

Previous year-end interviews with Edmonton's police chief  

McFee's other examples of the "chaos" created by social media included the defund-police movement — which was less active in Edmonton in 2024 than in previous years — and the doxxing of the officers who shut down a pro-Palestine camp demonstration at the University of Alberta in May.

"But you know, when our community safety and the safety of our residents are in jeopardy, I really don't care what people say on Twitter or any other social media."

Nonetheless, he thinks it's something Edmonton's next police chief will have to deal with. McFee called it "stabilizing the political aspect."

"My hope is that will eventually change and go in a better direction. But we should never ever in this community jeopardize safety again like it has been."

Other items he believes the next chief should prioritize: the intergovernmental plan for mental health and addictions; domestic violence, which he says is now the most frequent type of call in Edmonton; and the wellbeing of officers, all the while keeping gun crime down and recruitment up.

McFee's successor has not yet been announced. He hopes they are chosen from within the service to "maintain the momentum" EPS has built, perhaps one of his six deputies.

He considers his upcoming career move — made once before in Saskatchewan, when he took a job with that provincial government — the end of his police work.

"At this point in time, I have no plans of returning to policing," McFee told CTV News Edmonton. "I've had an exceptionally blessed career that I think I've had to work with a lot of great men and women, have had to navigate some complex issues in different aspects, both times, and I've thoroughly enjoyed it."

Asked if he would take the job of Edmonton's police chief again, he replied, "My whole career has been about coming in, making the necessary change. Sometime it's hard, but ... I won't back down. I think that's just part of my DNA.

"So would I take it? Yes. Has it been some of the toughtest things that I've ever had to do over the course of the last few years? Yeah, you bet."

With files from CTV News Edmonton's David Ewasuk