Police chief announces ‘flex’ unit to staff public events and improve lower-priority response times By: Chris Kitching Posted: 3:04 PM CDT Thursday, Apr. 30, 2026 Last Modified: 5:41 PM CDT Thursday, Apr. 30, 2026 Updates

The Winnipeg Police Service has formed a new 32-officer “flex team,” using existing personnel, that will focus on public protests and parades, and respond to incidents when there’s a surge in calls.

The rapid response unit, which will launch on Sunday, is designed to ease pressure on front-line officers, and improve response times and service at a time when police resources have been strained by high numbers of demonstrations and calls for service.

“When our call volumes are high, we want to be able to respond to those lower priorities. Every call is important to everybody, and we do have to prioritize calls,” Chief Gene Bowers said Thursday.

“Sometimes in the past, we haven’t got to some of the lower-priority calls, in my opinion, fast enough. This is going to give us some ability to get to those calls sooner than later, as well.”

Operating seven days per week but not 24-7, the unit will be the primary response to parades, protests, rallies and other large public gatherings in Winnipeg. Its first assignment is Sunday’s WPS half-marathon, where members will direct traffic and oversee security.

Until now, police had to pull officers from other units, including guns and gangs, and community support, to cover protests, parades or other gatherings.

“It took away from the concentration of what they were doing. It really wasn’t an efficient use of resources,” said Bowers, who was appointed police chief in March 2025.

“When residents call for help or express concerns about safety in their neighbourhoods, they deserve a response that is both timely and effective.”

“With some realignment within the service, we’re able to set up this unit with an actual mandate for those types of events and then also for calls for service.”

The police communications centre received about 760,000 calls for service in 2025, or about 2,000 per day. Reports of violent crime are trending downward, Bowers said.

He said the redeployment of officers to the response unit will not leave gaps in the units from which they were pulled.

“We didn’t want to have a negative effect on other operations. What I saw was we were having actually a negative effect on other operations with the way we were doing business,” Bowers said.

The response unit is a move toward efficiency and flexibility, he said. The WPS looked at what other police services in Canada are doing, while forming the unit.

Other duties will vary for the officers. When time allows, they can conduct proactive crime enforcement or help general patrol or specialty units address spikes in crime or concerns in specific neighbourhoods.

Their assignments will be based on current calls for service, data-driven crime trends or urgent concerns in the community, or requests for help from other police units.

The response unit is staffed by two sergeants, four patrol sergeants and 26 constables.

Mayor Scott Gillingham said he is confident their work will help to reduce crime, and improve response times and customer service.

“When residents call for help or express concerns about safety in their neighbourhoods, they deserve a response that is both timely and effective,” he said alongside Bowers at a news conference.

A 2024 survey, commissioned by the Winnipeg Police Board, suggested Winnipeg residents were less satisfied with WPS response times.

Of the 600 people polled, 39 per cent said the WPS is excellent or good at promptly responding to calls, down from 45 per cent in 2022 and 51 per cent in 2019.

Thursday’s announcement was met with optimism, some of it cautious, from some of Winnipeg’s community organizations.

The rollout is happening while the Senate considers the federal government’s proposed anti-hate bill. Civil liberties and labour groups have said Bill C-9 could restrict or criminalize peaceful protest.

The bill creates a new Criminal Code offence for intimidating a person in order to impede them from accessing places primarily used for religious worship or by an identifiable group.

Kate Kehler, executive director of the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg, said there could be an upside to a specific unit for protests, with Bill C-9 expected to pass.

“There are some concerns around the vagueness and the interpretation of the language around what is intimidation, and who decides what is intimidating behaviour?” she said about the proposed law. “Perhaps with a dedicated unit, there could be some consistency around that.”

Kehler, who has helped organize demonstrations in Winnipeg, said there is room for improvement under the approach that will change as of Sunday.

“What’s happening now hasn’t been working well all the time, so if the Winnipeg Police Service and the chief want to try something different, maybe it can be an improvement,” she said.

Darrell Warren, president of the William Whyte Neighbourhood Association in the North End, hopes the effort helps to lower response times. Some residents don’t report property crimes because current response times are slow, he said.

“I hope that they will work on things in the neighbourhood like break-ins, the drug houses and stuff like that,” Warren said. After multiple homicides, a police crackdown focused on violent crime in William Whyte last year.

Police encouraged people to report all crimes to identify and respond to trends.

Bowers dropped a hint about the new unit while attending a retail crime prevention conference Monday. He told attendees the WPS would realign some of its resources to give low-priority calls “the attention they deserve.”

Michael Paille, owner of Cobra Collectibles and executive director at Sargent Business Community, which hosted the conference, welcomed the rapid-response-unit concept.

The organization’s members have voiced their frustration about theft, vandalism and open drug use on Sargent Avenue.

“Businesses want to start seeing things getting done or we’re going to lose those small businesses. Do I think it’s going to work? We never know,” Paille said about the new unit.

He has advocated for a unit that pairs police and community support workers who provide outreach to people who are homeless, using drugs or otherwise need help.

Foot patrols can help to deter crime and make people feel safer, Paille said.

The WPS has added dozens more officers to its ranks the last few years with additional municipal and provincial funds. The service has said the number of officers has not kept up with Winnipeg’s population growth.

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca