Police Chief Bill Reid, who’s retiring in April, says the methadone programme has played a big role in reducing the city’s crime rate especially the number of armed robberies.
The Chief admits his support for a methadone programme was considered unorthodox at the time for someone in law enforcement and he got some pushback but the numbers speak for themselves.
Reid says, at one time, there were over a hundred armed robberies a year in the city and that has been reduced to 20 or 25.
The outgoing Chief says he saw a revolving door with people suffering from drug addiction commiting crimes to support their habit, going to jail, coming out and commiting more crime to buy drugs so a new approach was needed to stop what he calls “the madness”.
