Edmonton Headlines: Friday, July 14, 2017

You made it through another week, Edmonton! But don’t worry, before you run off to the weekend in celebration, we’ll get you caught up on what’s going on.

Desmond Cole and April Eve Wiberg are speaking Saturday night about police street checks. Cole’s been on a tour of Alberta cities talking about the issue, already stopping in Lethbridge and Calgary. The event is now sold out, but we’ll get you updates on the discussion next week. (And watch the tweets!)

Just before Cole arrived in our city, the Edmonton Police Commission announced a new review of the data that shows police are stopping Indigenous and Black Edmontonians more often. It’s disappointing that police, city council and other decisions makers in our municipal government would let this continue after two other reviews of the practice came out a few weeks ago. It also means they aren’t listening to those who say this practice is racial profiling and hurting people.

One of the two reviews of police data came from Black Lives Matter-Edmonton (the other was done by CBC Edmonton). BLM and Wiberg’s Stolen Sisters Awareness Movement don’t want another review. They want the targeting of BIPOC Edmontonians to stop and the data on file to be destroyed.

As the two groups put it: “If the police were serious about engaging the community then they would have not dismissed our concerns two weeks ago. “If the city was serious about engaging the community, the mayor would have condemned it two years ago. If the commission was serious about engaging the community, then they would have looked into this decades ago.”

Around the city

It doesn’t sound like the City and school boards (or provincial government) are on the same page when it comes to planning for current and future growth of neighbourhoods. A challenge of infill development is ensuring services, like schools, are in our mature neighbourhoods.

LRT extensions are also supposed to increase the amenities and services where the train will be. But Holyrood is not ready to take on that much redevelopment. Speaking of LRT, when it comes to reaching people in the suburbs, city council won’t work with private transportation companies, but why not?

The mayor wants the province to oversee combat sports. So do other mayors in Alberta. This is the only province that asks cities and towns to oversee violent sports. And these requests from mayors came before a fighter was killed in an Edmonton boxing match.

Edmonton’s inner city gets a lot of attention when we’re talking about affordable housing and homeless services. But many other neighbourhoods have similar and related social issues. Jasper Place neighbours are trying to grow their food security with a new wellness centre.

A longread from CBC Edmonton is worth your time if you missed it earlier this week. It’s about an Edmonton man heading to Turkey to try and bring his family back here, after he fled the regime in charge of that country. He’s hoping that applications to the Canadian government can be approved before his visa to Turkey expires and separates the family again.

In this election year, where we’re trying to get more women elected, it’s worth going back to talk with our only female mayor. The Broadcast has that interview.

Public engagement

This weekend, you can check out the work happening to make Jasper Avenue a better neighbourhood street. There’s a whole bunch of events happening Saturday for the launch of a summer of Experience Jasper Avenue.