'Why do you need four officers?': Edmonton woman questions police interaction with homeless man

An Edmonton woman is raising concerns about how vulnerable people are policed after witnessing what she called an intimidating interaction between a homeless man and local officers.

Chelsea Vowel was on her way into the McDonald's near Kingsway Mall last Wednesday morning when she walked by a man experiencing homelessness. She asked if he wanted a coffee and some food, and brought it out to him before going back inside to buy her own meal.

Shortly after, Vowel said a customer told her police were "hassling" the man.

"I was afraid for him," Vowel said. "I just wanted to go out there and be a witness and see how he was doing."

When she went outside, Vowel said she saw four officers standing around the man, who was sitting on an LRT barricade beside the McDonald's parking lot.

"Who needs four policemen to deal with one guy who's eating a meal?" she said.

"Send one officer out. Why do you need four officers?"

Vowel took a video toward the end of the interaction. The camera is pointed toward the man's feet, but officers can be heard saying they were inside the McDonald's for a while, and saw him loitering and panhandling.

"All the businesses around here … they come down on us and they're like 'why aren't you guys doing your job, kicking these guys out?'" one officer said. "We're getting yelled at from everybody."

Vowel said the man didn't ask her for food or money, and she communicated that to the officers.

"They started listing off all of the things they could charge him with, and that seemed a bit over the top," she said.

Balancing complaints and concerns

In an emailed statement, Edmonton police spokesperson Cheryl Voordenhout said police have received requests to manage panhandling at the McDonald's.

"Officers have the difficult job of balancing the concerns of business owners and customers with sensitivity around the complex challenges faced by individuals who are panhandling. In a case like this, officers must uphold the law, and will do so with a conversation rather than a ticket whenever possible," she wrote.

"Typically, officers will spend some time interacting with the person and talking to them about appropriate social services that may be able to help them. In this case, officers diverted their attention to answer concerns raised by a bystander, while the subject individual left the interaction."

Boyle Street Community Services spokesperson Elliott Tanti said these types of interactions are most effective with fewer police and a friendly, intimate discourse.

"Those are all strategies and conversations that we have regularly with police, and police are vital to the work that we do," he said.

Tanti said it's rare to see more than two officers approach someone who's panhandling, and the conversations are usually gentle.

"Police know that the more officers that are involved in a situation, generally it has the chance of escalating situations — just as a third-party intervener walking in in these situations can escalate," he said.

If people see a concerning police interaction, Tanti recommends they stand back and document it instead of inserting themselves into the situation.

Vowel said she was wary of escalating the interaction at McDonald's, but stands by her decision to intervene.

She said it's crucial to explore the underlying reasons for homelessness. In particular, she said it's important to question why so many Indigenous people, like the man in the video, are homeless on their own lands.

"We need to deal with panhandling in a different way, in a more compassionate way. And police officers are not social workers," said Vowel, who is Métis.

"Being homeless and ... needing money and needing food shouldn't be criminalized."