A new stabilization centre inside the former Edmonton Police Service headquarters is helping connect people in crisis with addiction treatment. In its first three and a half weeks, the six-bed facility recorded 98 admissions, and 12 people moved directly to the Addiction Recovery Centre at Alberta Hospital Edmonton, generally within 24 hours of arriving.

The integrated stabilization centre opened in September in space converted from old police holding cells. Its purpose is to give people time to stabilize and connect them with Recovery Alberta, rather than simply moving them from arrest to release or shelter, according to Edmonton Police Service Chief Warren Driechel.

“Those are 12 people that would still be on the street today,” Driechel said of the transfers. The centre offers enhanced health supports, and the early admissions have given police and health staff a way to connect people with care after contact with officers.

Driechel said he rejects the view that people experiencing addiction do not want help. “I actually truly believe people want help. They just don’t know they need help at the time. And so the goal of this, what we’re working on, is like to slow things down a bit, provide all our frontline workers a place to take people, and then get them stabilized to a point where we’re going to have a higher rate of success in providing services to them,” he said.

The new facility is one part of a broader set of options that has developed as Edmonton police respond to addiction, social disorder and homelessness. Driechel pointed to the navigation centre, medically assisted beds at Hope Shelter and recovery centres being established around Alberta, including therapeutic living units intended to help people with severe addiction build different ways of living.

The shift follows criticism of police actions during the winter of 2024, when officers under former chief Dale McFee actively dismantled occupied encampments around the city. Driechel said that period marked a turning point for him and cited the opening of the navigation centre through the provincial government’s Mental Health and Addiction and Housing the Homeless initiatives.

Moving people from street locations into shelters had not been enough, he said, because many were not being connected to the services police hoped to make available. Driechel recalled frustration and “a lack of clarity of what to do with people” as officers tried to steer people toward support without a clear plan for follow-up.

He described the consequences of repeated crises on the street, including one individual who has been revived from overdose more than 400 times. “We continued to track an increase in opioid deaths, not the reduction that we wanted to see in the Edmonton region,” Driechel said.

“We were seeing people in crisis on the street. We were seeing the open-air drug use, and then our members asking, what do they do with these individuals? There was this just kind of shuffling of people around without the supports and a plan in place,” he said. “We’re all kind of just like walking around it, walking by it, and I don’t think we can allow that anymore.”

With the added services, officers responding to social disorder linked to addiction have more places to take people. Driechel said the integrated stabilization centre gives frontline workers a focal point, while the navigation centre and recovery services offer further routes into care.

“The goal is really to to kind of stem the flow of these deaths and the addiction that we’re seeing on the street. This really gives a focal point for frontline workers to take people,” he said. “The sooner we can start to get people through these systems, the more time that they have to go back and dedicate to the community. So that’s really a motivator for us.”

Data on contact with the justice system has helped shape the approach. Between 2020 and 2023, half of the people who died of an overdose in Alberta had some contact with the criminal justice and correctional system, according to figures cited by the province.

Early figures indicate correctional treatment interventions were associated with a reported 67 per cent reduction in overdoses one year after release among people who had contact with the system. Officials have described the point of interaction with corrections as an opportunity to offer stronger mental health and addiction supports.

Recovery Alberta’s opioid agonist therapy program is available in correctional cells and in the community. The treatment is voluntary, and police interventions have recently expanded access to a monthly injection intended to block opioid effects and make opioid use produce agony.

About 2,000 people each year receive voluntary access to opioid agonist therapy through the virtual opioid dependency program. Health supports are also available in arrest processing units across Alberta.

“(We said) ‘Wow, we absolutely need to lean in and support these individuals in many cases,” said Evan Romanow, deputy minister for Mental Health and Addiction under Minister Rick Wilson. Romanow said Edmonton Police has been leading efforts to connect people through these pathways.

Romanow discussed the work during a panel at the Alberta Municipalities conference on Wednesday. The approach drew interest from Ponoka Coun. Carla Lloyd, who asked for more services in rural areas.

“We need more services rurally. Ponoka, in particular, we sit with a major psychiatric facility and our four nations to the north,” Lloyd told Romanow. He said staffing has been a greater challenge than funding in expanding the services.

Smaller-scale or developing versions of the approach are present in Calgary, Grande Prairie, Lethbridge and Red Deer, as well as RCMP detachments, with potential involvement from tribal police services. Romanow said the goal is to expand police and crisis team resources.

“It’s just staggering the positive enhancements to people’s lives as evidenced by mortality, (and) by the outcomes with pathways that didn’t exist before because the health supports didn’t exist before,” he said. The ministry is also speaking with the RCMP about using its central capacity, including embedding a mental health therapist with dispatch to support local enforcement teams and connect them with Recovery Alberta.

The expansion has come with a substantial increase in provincial spending. Romanow said Mental Health and Addiction’s budget grew from approximately $80 million in direct funding in 2019 to $2.3 billion, including roughly $300 million in newly transferred shelter and housing supports and more than $350 million in capital for recovery communities.

The $2.3-billion figure includes a $300-million infusion from June 2026 that had not yet appeared in budget books, Romanow said. It also includes the transfer of shelter and housing supports funding from Assisted Living and Social Services, in addition to the $2 billion within Mental Health and Addiction’s direct scope. Romanow said the ministry is now the seventh-largest in government.

Tracy Palmquist, a registered psychologist and senior operating officer of addiction services at Recovery Alberta, said the pace of movement from street settings into recovery for people with severe substance use disorder is unprecedented. She began her career as a frontline addiction counsellor with AADAC 24 years ago.

“It’s been quite remarkable, and the partnership with police and with Mental Health and Addiction has been transformational, I think. I have not seen this in all my years in the field,” Palmquist said.

Based on reporting by Edmonton Journal.