Red Deer Mounties host ‘Coffee with a Cop’

By Sheldon Spackman, RD News
Original article HERE

Red Deerians had a chance to interact informally with local RCMP members on Wednesday to discuss anything they wanted.

‘Coffee with a Cop’ was held at a north end coffee shop allowing Mounties to hear what’s on the minds of residents.

Red Deer RCMP superintendent Gerald Grobmeier says the objective of these outings is to reach out and talk to people in the community who normally wouldn’t get to speak with police officers.

“This is a very non-intimidating place,” explains Grobmeier. “It’s not a police station, people come to socialize here. It’s an opportunity for them to speak with myself – the Chief of Police and my Acting Operations Officer about any concerns they have, any questions, or just curious about things and even just wanting to stop by and say ‘thank you’.”

Grobmeier says the feedback they received was very positive.

“We haven’t had anybody come here and blame us for problems,” says Grobmeier. “We’ve been talking about a wide variety of topics such as the Overdose Prevention Site (OPS), there was a lot of talk about that. Downtown, property crime, even rural crime, even though we don’t police the rural area, but it’s still a topic that they have an interest from. We’ve talked about police dogs, firearms, traffic, a little bit of everything.”

Grobmeier hopes those who attended have a better understanding of the police force working for them.

“We are innovative, we are doing many things other than just driving around arresting people,” says Grobmeier.

“We’ve been able to share our story with them and explain to them, some of the things we do that maybe the public doesn’t know that we do and enlighten them a little bit as to what’s going on. Not just in the police world but our interactions with the various different agencies trying to work collaboratively here in the city, so they can get a sense that not only the police, but the City of Red Deer and the social agencies are here, working together, trying to make Red Deer a better place to be.”