Policing Symptoms or Solving Roots? Fredericton Re-Activates 'DART' Unit to Combat Public Drug Use

Amid growing community anxieties and intense municiple election debates regarding public safety, the Fredericton Police Force has deployed its specialized Direct Action Response Team (DART). The initiative is heavily concentrated in Fredericton's Business Improvement Areas (BIAs), targeting both the north-side business district and the downtown south-side core [1].

While city officials and business owners point to immediate enforcement successes, local experts warn that relying on law enforcement to manage structural social crises risks criminalizing vulnerable populations without resolving the root causes of addiction and homelessness [1].

The Mandate of DART

Nicknamed DART, the Direct Action Response Team was initially established as a pilot project designed to combine proactive policing with frontline officer mentorship [2]. The team is intelligence-led and heavily reliant on direct complaints from local businesses and community members [1, 2].

According to Fredericton Police Force Inspector David Cooper, who oversees the force's operations and patrols, DART has been deployed 29 times across the city's major commercial zones [1]. In early June, a concentrated sweep by DART resulted in 10 arrests, the execution of nine outstanding warrants, and the closure of three "Repeat Priority Offender" files [3]. The offenses identified during the operation highlighted the intersection of street-level disorder and petty crime, ranging from the possession of controlled substances and breach of court-ordered conditions to driving violations, trespassing, and possession of stolen property [2,3].

"DART operations are focused on addressing repeat offending and the locations contributing to ongoing criminal activity in our community," Detective Al Irvine noted in a public release, framing the operations as a targeted effort to handle street-level disorder [3].

Inspector Cooper echoed this baseline distinction between criminality and systemic hardship, clarifying, "We've said it before, it's not a criminal offence to be unhoused, it's not a criminal offence to live with mental health issues, or to live with addiction. That's not illegal. But if you're going to be using drugs in public and committing crimes, that is illegal" [1].

The Criminological Critique: Perception vs. Statistics

Despite visible measures like DART, academic experts caution that increased police visibility can obscure the reality of actual crime trends.

Michael Boudreau, a criminology professor at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, pointed out that the public safety anxieties driving municipal political platforms conflict with actual statistical trends [1]. Data compiled by the Fredericton Police Force revealed that overall crime in the capital city declined by 17%, while property crime dropped significantly by 30% [1].

Furthermore, data from Statistics Canada aligns with this general trajectory, showing that New Brunswick's province-wide Crime Severity Index (CSI) - which measures both the volume and severity of crime - dropped from 87.78 to 84.53 [1, 4].

Professor Boudreau expressed concern over how "public safety" is being loosely defined and leveraged politically. While acknowledging that statistics do not nullify the real, human anxieties of residents who see open drug use or visible homelessness. Boudreau warns that heavy-handed policing responses are an ineffective tool for long-term correction [1].

"If public safety means more police and policing, that's not going to solve the problem," Boudreau argued. "And that's not because the police are not good at their job. It's just that they're not trained to solve homelessness or addiction or mental illness" [1].

He added that by leaning heavily on the justice system to manage public health dilemmas, municipalities are inadvertently taking part in a decades-long policy failure. "I think what has happened is that we have criminalized homeless people, we have criminalized mental health issues... You cannot fight addiction with the Criminal Code. Our first national drug law was in 1908 so... if that was the start of our so-called war on drugs in Canada, we're still losing, because it's an addition, not a criminal justice issue" [1].

The Municipal Dilemma

Even law enforcement leadership acknowledges that they are a stopgap measure for a complex socioeconomic ecosystem. "We now know, and everybody knows, that this isn't solely a police problem to fix, but we will certainly do our part," Insp. Cooper admitted [1].

The reliance on programs like DART exposes a structural jurisdictional gap in Canada's governance. While municipal governments bear the immediate brunt of community frustration over open substance use and street-level disorder, they lack the legislative power and budgets to implement broad social changes [1]. Major responsibilities like building affordable housing, funding mental health facilities, and creating comprehensive substance-rehabilitation infrastructure fall squarely under provincial jurisdiction [1].

As long as provincial social infrastructure lags behind the demands of the current drug crisis, cities like Fredericton find themselves with few alternatives but to utilize the tools they control directly: police patrols, security cameras, and tactical task forces [1]. Though DART may succeed in temporarily clearing public spaces for business districts, the root crises of housing insecurity and substance dependance continue to shift across the municipal landscape, waiting for systemic solutions rather than handcuffs [1].

References

[1] Rudderham, Hannah. (2026, June 17). "Fredericton police team deployed to tackle public drug use, petty crime." CBC News. 

[2] City of Fredericton. (2026, June 15). "Fredericton Police DART enforcement initiative supports safer public spaces." Official Police News Release.

[3] Roulston, Lauren. (2026, June 10). "Fredericton police arrest 10 in targeted downtown operation." CTV News Atlantic.

[4] Statistics Canada. (2025, July 22). "The Daily - Police-reported crime statistics in Canada." (Table 35-10-0026-01: Crime Severity Index annual changes).