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Calgary Police Association wants 100 officers as backdrop for news conference on 'areas of concern'

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The new head of the Calgary Police Association is planning to hold a news conference Wednesday to “provide a voice” on behalf of the city’s police officers. 

Les Kaminski, the recently elected president of the union that represents 2,200 sworn officers, is scheduled to hold the event outside Calgary Police Association offices at 1 p.m.

Kaminski will address the media to “provide a voice on behalf of the sworn police officers regarding areas of concern,” a media advisory stated. 

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The chair of the Calgary police commission, Brian Thiessen, said the CPA president met with the commission and with Calgary police executive Tuesday afternoon at a scheduled meeting, where a number of issues were discussed.

“We brought up the fact that there was a media conference and we said if you have any issues to raise we’d love to hear them here,” Thiessen said. 

He said some of the issues that were discussed at the meeting included police-involved shootings and the commission’s seven-point plan on gender discrimination issues.

According to Thiessen, the union seemed “quite adamant” on tenure issues. 

“So, talking about some of the work the service is doing to move individuals with expertise . . . if you have an officer who’s done a lot of experience, having them move and rotate through and give that experience to others,” Thiessen said. “They seemed to have a lot of concern on tenure.”

Thiessen said the commission told the union it heard them “loud and clear” on the concern and asked them to work with CPS on the issue.

“We hope we addressed all their concerns,” said Thiessen, adding the commission invited the union to sit in on its regular meetings to discuss any concerns. 

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“They seemed receptive to that,” he said. “They haven’t been at our meetings before, even though they’re public, so we thought it would be a good idea to extend that invite so we can get a more regular chain of communication going with the CPA.”

Kaminski did not respond to a request for an interview with Postmedia on Tuesday.

Doug King, a criminologist at Mount Royal University, said morale among the rank and file members of the Calgary Police Service is “not as good as it could be.”

“It wouldn’t be unexpected that in an environment where employee morale is low, that the association that represents those employees will express concern about that and maybe make some recommendations about what is causing it and ways that it could be addressed,” said King. 

He added that if, as media reports indicate, the new president is encouraging 100 union members to attend the news conference as a show of unity, that would be “out of the norm.”

Prior to being elected to the role of president with the union late last year, replacing former president Howard Burns, Kaminski also served as a director with the CPA for six years, from 2007 to 2013. 

ycole@postmedia.com

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