One of the Edmontonians who took city councillors up on their suggestion to express her concerns to the Edmonton Police Commission came away from the experience feeling nothing will change.
Michelle Peters-Jones and her five-year-old son found themselves confronted by the convoy protest on Feb. 12 with no police in sight. "I felt unsafe in my own city. And that is not right," she told Speaking Municipally.
She registered to speak at the Feb. 17 police commission meeting after seeing a tweet from Coun. Ashley Salvador encouraging citizens to do so if they were unhappy with the way events unfolded. She was one of eight members of the public who had five minutes each to express their concerns at the meeting. All of them were critical of various aspects of the police response to the convoy on Feb. 12, whether it be the lack of presence downtown, the continued honking noise despite a court injunction against it, or the swift response to a counter-protest trying to stop the convoy on River Valley Road.
Peters-Jones said she felt somewhat "gaslighted" already going into the meeting, as police commission chair John McDougall had said in an op-ed piece and Chief Dale McFee had said in a news conference that police had accomplished their goal to keep everyone safe through the protest.
"I didn't feel unheard. But at the same time, I didn't feel like anything was going to happen differently because I shared this," Peters-Jones said. "I'm hoping that they do take my voice seriously, and they do take the voice of the people who spoke at the commission seriously, but honestly, I can't see that happening, you know, and that's really sad."
The convoy returned to Edmonton streets on Feb. 19. This time the police said they issued 209 tickets and arrested one person on a warrant.
You'll hear much more about the police commission meeting in Episode 167 of Taproot's civic affairs podcast, including the Edmonton Police Service's $7.4 million deficit and the curious lack of curiosity about it among commissioners, as well as revelations that the police service has an airplane that it's about to replace for $4.3 million.
Photo: A screenshot of commissioners and Chief Dale McFee's conference room from the Feb. 17 meeting of the Edmonton Police Commission.