Police presence in Glengarry social housing buildings has reduced calls for service: WPS

Windsor Police are reporting an improvement inside a notorious downtown high-rise.

“Glengarry is no longer one of our top violent, locations in the city of Windsor,” said Supt. Paolo DiCarlo in a statement on Thursday.

DiCarlo says that although there are still violent calls for service inside Glengarry, those calls have been greatly reduced since last August.

That’s when police created a special office inside the social housing building to allow officers to de-escalate situations before a call to 911 is necessary.

The forces' unique nurse-police team as well as their social worker unit have also been working to help with non-emergency complaints.

Since August, arrests have gone up nearly 40 per cent for crimes in the building on Glengarry Ave. building and surrounding area.

DiCarlo says they don’t believe the crime that was present in the area has shifted to a different neighbourhood, but they are looking at the data.

“We’re looking at, different locations, whether they’re all extremely high and calls for service for violent crime or whether there’s just places that are calls for service for us that don’t require us to be there,” said DiCarlo. “[We want] to basically try to make sure our resources are being used in the right spots, in the right areas.”

DiCarlo says they will maintain a high profile presence for the time being until they are confident the neighbourhood safety is secure.

Police won’t say which neighbourhood now takes over top spot for the highest number of calls to 911 for violent crime.

“Essentially the idea here is to is to basically, you know, slowly remove ourselves from areas and, and making sure that they’re sustainable, without our presence there,” stated DiCarlo. “If we’re required to go back, we would go back for sure.”