Property crime problematic for downtown business
By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on February 12, 2022.
LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com Downtown businesses are having problems with property crimes and the police have heard their concerns.Sarah Amies, community director of the Downtown Lethbridge Business Revitalization Zone, says she’s had discussions with Lethbridge Police Service chief Shahin Mehdizadeh about crime issues.
“Some of our small businesses do seem to be the victim of breaks-in. Often these break-ins are of the smash-and-grab type so they don’t seem to be particularly well organized, for instance,” said Amies Thursday.
“The thing is break-and-enters are given really high values in the Crime Severity Index and so because there are quite frequent break-ins in the downtown core, the Crime Severity Index gets tagged every time” and as a result rates look “alarmingly high”, said Amies.
“This is just something the BRZ is working with its membership on in terms of finding strategies as to how to push off those crimes of opportunity” without resorting to the use of roll shutters, she said.
“While they do provide a great deal of security, they don’t do a great deal for the vibrancy and the look of downtown,” Amies added.
The director said she understands if business owners are at wit’s end and feel roll shutters are the only solution, which she calls a “very, very drastic measure.”
The BRZ is talking to businesses about installing metal bars behind glass. And if they go the roll shutter route, then they can potentially put them on timers so they don’t get rolled down at 5 in the afternoon when there is still traffic.
“They can potentially get rolled down later on in the evening when your typical foot traffic for downtown would have gone home and then leave the core open and empty to folks who are bent on doing mischief,” she said.
No particular streets are targeted, Amies said, just businesses in general with street-level storefronts.
“More often than not it’s the small business owner that seems to be broken into,” said Amies.
Amies and a couple of board members met with the police chief at his invitation on Feb. 3.
The police, said Amies, are dealing with major resource issues with no increase in officer numbers for several years and a $1 million budget cut. She also said the downtown policing unit has been cut in half from eight officers to four.
Referring to Mehdizadeh, “his hands are pretty tied because he’s dealing with major resource issues,” said Amies.
“He’s very community-minded and very interested in working with us in the downtown. We talked about private security but that’s extremely expensive and basically private security will phone the Lethbridge Police Service if they come across something going on. It all goes back to the same call number,” Amies said.
Amies said she was told by a BRZ member it’s difficult to prosecute someone for a crime under $3,000 “so because of that difficulty in prosecuting, there don’t seem to be a huge number of deterrents for folks who are causing mischief downtown, either just for the fun and games of it or to potentially feed a habit or a lifestyle,” added Amies.
Amies said a lot of positive things happen downtown which people will see more when Festival Square opens downtown and more events are planned to increase foot traffic.
“It’s important to highlight the positives as opposed to the negatives.” Follow @albeebHerald on Twitter 4
-3
