Private policing contracts by the Edmonton Police Service have grown significantly over the last five years, according to new data, with the number of hours and dollars involved more than quadrupling since 2020.
The extra duty detail (EDD) program allows private organizations to contract Edmonton police officers outside of their regular shifts, for duties ranging from traffic control to providing a visible police presence at large events.
CBC News obtained the data through a freedom of information request to EPS.
Temitope Oriola, a professor and criminologist at the University of Alberta, said that while there may be situations where extra duty details make sense, current EPS policies lack clarity on the distinction between public and private policing.
“The line appears to be quite blurred right now,” he said. “It’s unclear to me where one ends and where the other begins.”
Specific criteria must be met
The practice of providing private policing services through paid contracts goes back decades at EPS.
In the past, EPS’s private contracts included “weddings, bars and nightclubs, graduations and other questionable events,” according to an EDD policy document. Those shifts often “devolved into security work resulting in an unacceptable ownership of liability and careless stewardship of EPS resources.”
As a result of a 2013 review, the program today has stricter rules and a client’s request must meet certain criteria to be approved.
The policy outlines three categories for EDD requests.
One category is “crime and/or disorder.” For these requests, clients must first provide “verifiable information and statistics” to demonstrate that crime or disorder is occurring. A risk analysis of the request must be completed, weighing safety concerns and how the proposed deployment would reflect on EPS.
According to the policy document, these types of requests are rarely granted because it would invite allegations of preferential treatment or two-tier policing. If a client’s request highlights a legitimate public safety concern, it may be addressed by deploying regular EPS resources.
Extra duty requests can also address “client risk management,” described as cases with the potential for crime, disorder or risks to public safety, such as with large crowds during festivals or sporting events.
The third category, which is rarely used, involves police officers being requested for ceremonial roles.
The EDD rules also allow for the deployment of police to direct traffic during construction or the movement of large equipment. Such “vessel move” jobs are described as an “exceptional” subcategory. However, they account for 32 per cent of the list of clients, although the data does not indicate how many hours or officers that represents.
There are also restrictions around when officers are allowed to accept the voluntary shifts, including requirements to have at least one hour between their regular shift and an EDD shift, and at least eight hours of rest between an EDD shift and their regular shift.
Police not overstretched, says EPS
The EPS data provided to CBC includes monthly totals for the number of hours, number of officers and amount paid to police working extra duty shifts. The hourly rates for extra duty police start at $150 for a constable and $30 for a car, with a minimum charge of three hours.
The data also includes a monthly list of clients. However, no information is included about how many hours or officers each client represents, or even how many days per month a contract might be for.
For example, although Hope City Church appears once per month during the past three years, the church said in a statement that it had hired two officers each Sunday to help with the congested traffic from the 4,000 people who attend its services.
In 2020, the amount paid to police for extra duty shifts was less than $800,000. By 2024, that figure rose to $3.8 million.
Between 2021 and 2024, the number of EDD shifts increased by 215 per cent, while the number of hours rose by 240 per cent.
During that same period, the number of Edmonton’s sworn police officers rose from 1,921 to 2,119 — an increase of 10 per cent.
The time frame of the data spans the social restrictions of the pandemic and three Oilers playoff runs past the first round. These events may explain some of the trends but it’s not backed up by the data, because of the lack of detailed information around hours or shifts per contract.
In a statement, EPS provided figures of extra duty shifts for 2018 and 2019, saying that the recent increase was simply a return to pre-pandemic levels.
However, the number of EDD shifts last year — 5,471 — still exceeded 2018’s total by more than 1,400.
“We must emphasize that these duties are not overstretching police resources,” said the EPS statement. Rather, having off-duty officers on-site at large events “ensures public safety needs are met in real time, without drawing from the active operational pool.”
In particular, officers on extra duty are able to perform tasks for which private security lacks the legal authority, such as directing traffic or controlling crowds in public spaces.
City expenses unclear
The most frequently occurring client over the five years of data was OEG Inc., which owns the Edmonton Oilers and operates Rogers Place. Including its subsidiaries, the company appeared on the list of clients 99 times.
A spokesperson for OEG said that the Oilers’ recent playoff runs have increased the use of extra duty police to augment private security. The team made it to the conference finals in 2022 and the Stanley Cup finals in 2024.
The second-most frequent client in the data was the City of Edmonton.
A statement from the city noted that it co-ordinated civic services for more than 800 events last year. The costs for those services, “including extra duty police, are the responsibility of the event organizer and are mostly recovered by the City.”
A civic services subsidy is provided for some local festivals and events to cover certain costs including extra duty detail, said the statement. For city-hosted events, like New Year’s Eve and Canada Day festivities, “extra duty policing costs are incurred by the City.”
CBC News requested the total amount spent by the city on extra duty police shifts over the past five years. A spokesperson provided expense figures that did not account for any reimbursements by partners. The city was not able to say what its own costs for extra duty police were.
‘Their presence is just comforting’
Oriola noted that in the extra duty policies document, EPS referred to the City of Edmonton as a “community partner.”
“I think it’s important to not simply treat the City of Edmonton as just another community partner. That is your parent organization,” said Oriola. “There is no EPS without the City of Edmonton.”
As an example of an extra duty contract, the EPS document lists synagogues, mosques or large cultural gatherings for which “intelligence has indicated a heightened threat but without an identified person … which would otherwise be referred to an investigative area.”
That underscored Oriola’s concerns around whether the police are billing as private services what they ought to provide as a public service.
“If a mosque, synagogue or church requires a police presence, I don’t think that should be construed as private policing,” he said. “That’s part of what the police do.”
Two churches are among the most frequently listed clients in the data, but their extra duty contracts are related to managing traffic congestion on Sundays.
“They’re really great,” said Jim Somerville, executive pastor at North Pointe Community Church, which has only one entry and exit point for its large parking lot.
“Their presence is just comforting to people so that they know we’re doing our best to get traffic in and out because of the volume.”
Some tasks ‘a routine part of policing’
Oriola agreed that police should be present for large events like festivals or Oilers games, and that it makes sense to recover the costs of those deployments from profit-generating entities like OEG.
But that shouldn’t be the approach when it comes to city events, or directing traffic to move heavy equipment for a city project.
“Those, I would humbly submit, ought to be considered a routine part of policing and not private policing,” said Oriola.
“It’s important that those kinds of duties be seen as, broadly speaking, a part of the service that the EPS provides to the City of Edmonton.”
