Waterloo Regional Police are looking west to help them determine the best way to manage Kitchener’s proposed safe consumption site.

Police say they plan on heading to a Calgary site to learn how the police force there has adapted, a controversial move because of increased crime near the city's site.

“With the decision being finalized on Monday,” says Police Chief Bryan Larkin, “we had been looking at the challenges that Calgary and the City of Calgary and the Calgary Police Service have been facing around their consumption treatment site.”

The Sheldon Chumir Health Centre is the city’s only safe consumption site, near Calgary’s downtown core. Opened in 2017, Calgary police say there’s been a 29 per cent jump in calls to the area.

A report from February shows a spike in drug dealing, violence and break and enters. Calgary police say it’s been taxing.

“That includes changing shifts, redeploying officers from bikes, redeploying beat officers,” said Ryan Ayliffe, acting deputy chief of operations for the Calgary Police Service in February.

Kitchener Mayor Barry Vrbanovic points out other safe consumption sites that are working well, such as the one in Guelph.

Police there have not seen a spike in crime since it opened in 2018.

Calgary health officials say the centre has reversed more than 800 overdoses. The city’s mayor, Naheed Nenshi, said in February that it’s a difficult balancing act.

“We can’t be knee jerk about this,” he said at the time. “We have to protect the ability to save people’s lives as well as the ability to get the right long term strategy in place, but at the same time we’ve got to make sure that the immediate neighbours aren’t bearing the brunt of all of this.”

Officials in Calgary have developed a 12-step plan that includes more mental health and addiction supports, as well as on-site security. They’re also considering opening a mobile injection site in another area of the city.

In Kitchener, the safe consumption site still awaits provincial approval after being voted for unanimously by both Kitchener and regional council.

“What they would do differently, what’s working well, what’s not working well and then come back and really make a Waterloo Region solution,” explains Chief Larkin.

Mayor Nenshi was not available to provice more information regarding the planned WRPS visit.