City’s district police stations will reopen to public next year, chief says

Winnipeggers will soon be able to connect with officers face-to-face at four district police stations, and the city’s police chief believes a fifth site should be added in the future.

Winnipeg Police Service Chief Gene Bowers said three existing district stations will reopen to the public “early in 2026,” fulfilling a previous promise.

On Friday, he told reporters he believes an additional south district police station will be needed in the future, since neighbourhoods in that end of the city have experienced rapid growth.

“There’s been a lot of discussions about a south district station. Definitely, if the world was my oyster, I would like to see a station at some point,” said Bowers.

During Friday’s Winnipeg Police Board meeting, a WPS presentation noted areas of the city experiencing the greatest increases of crime include some neighbourhoods on the “periphery” of Winnipeg. Police believe that trend is linked to rapid population growth. These areas also can face the longest waits for a police response, in part due to travel time to reach them, the presentation noted.

A separate city report estimates Winnipeg’s total population rose to 843,363 in 2024, from 772,564 in 2021. That includes an estimated population of 70,983 in Waverley West last year, up from 58,194 in 2021.

Bowers said he wasn’t part of the WPS executive in 2003, when it decided to reduce the number of divisional stations in Winnipeg from six to four. He believes the service likely didn’t expect the south side of the city to grow as rapidly as it has.

He said exact dates to reopen the west (Grant Avenue), north (Sinclair Street) and east (Dugald Road) stations have not been set. The three locations have not offered face-to-face service to the public since the pandemic hit in 2020, while the downtown Smith Street headquarters remained open.

Former WPS chief Danny Smyth declined previous requests to fully reopen the stations to the public, arguing it wasn’t a good use of police staff and other resources.

Bowers said existing WPS members are now in place to work at the districts, so new positions are not required. He said some construction is underway to support the reopening but did not provide a cost estimate.

He said reintroducing in-person service will allow people to make police reports at the stations.

“That’s going to bring that connection back to the community and give people an opportunity to come in and talk to officers who are stationed there,” Bowers said during the police board meeting.

Colleen Mayer, the interim chairwoman of the police board, supported the plan to reopen the three closed district offices as a way to better communicate with the public.

“I think that there is a desire from the community (for this) and we’ve heard that loud and clear,” said Mayer.

She declined to say if she’d like to see a south district station added.

During the board meeting, WPS also revealed that incident numbers for “nearly every” violent-crime category are decreasing this year.

That includes a 54 per cent drop in the number of homicides compared to a year ago. There have been 19 reported homicides so far in 2025, compared to 41 during the same period of 2024.

Bowers said it’s tough to pin down the reasons why there are fewer slayings, though there are likely several factors. He noted the overall reduction in violent crime reduces the number of incidents that can end in death. He said initiatives such as the Manitoba Integrated Violent Offender Apprehension Unit also helped take some of the most violent suspects off the streets.

WPS is also seeing a greatly reduced backlog of calls in its service queue, with just 24 waiting at one point on Friday morning, he said. That’s down from a previous high of 440 events during the August long weekend of 2024.

Bowers said the demand changes each season but overall, backlogs are now quite low.

“Our queue is lower than what we’ve seen, in my time, in years.… It used to just be our front-line members were responsible for that queue management. We (now) have the whole service jumping in and taking responsibility for calls. (For) lower-priority calls… we can have desk sergeants phone and make contact with the public. That’s helping,” he said.

Despite that improvement, Bowers said he would still need to hire 36 more officers than the number proposed in the 2026 budget to meet the demands of the city’s growing population.

“We need those cars out there so that we’re spread out amongst the city, so that we can respond in a timely matter. When we don’t have those resources out there, then it limits us in our response time,” he said.

The WPS will also add a rapid response unit, though the number of members and exact details of their work are still being determined, he said.

“It’s a flex unit that we can move quickly and address crime trends within the city,” said Bowers.

He said the unit would be versatile, able to respond to protests, shoplifting and support other police priorities, relieving pressure on other front-line officers.

joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca

X: @joyanne_pursaga