Rhino's Ramblings - "Unsettling Incidents"

By Robert Thomas Opinion - Commentary

“It is about time they do something,” I was told this past week by a Downtown business owner.

He was reacting to the news the City is poised to launch a pilot program to hopefully crack down on some of the “unsettling incidents” which have allegedly occurred in the Downtown.

Basically the City is set to run a pilot program whereby uniformed Commissionaires will be patrolling the Downtown core from sundown to sunrise for the month of November on the lookout for after hours shenanigans going on.

Commissionaires will not engage people they think are acting suspiciously but rather they will alert the Moose Jaw Police Service (MJPS) who will then investigate the situation.

There will then be a report back to Council before the Budget is considered - a sign the patrol may be a regular thing.

It all sounds good, so neat and all tied up like a bow.

The unnamed “unsettling issues” will hopefully be dealt with. Even though the report to Executive Committee does not say exactly what the “unsettling issues” were on property owned and controlled by the City of Moose Jaw.

For some it might sound like just what the cook called for but here is the thing there is apparently no empirical evidence of what has been going on and everything is simply anecdotal.

The problem is just how - given the many statements we have heard about the Downtown from promoters - did it ever get like this?

And with that said if it has been an on-going problem for years why wasn’t something done about it as in year’s ago?

Given the backdrop and what we have been officially told the Downtown does not have an after hours problem. In fact the City has worked hard through such things as the outdoor patio program to attract people to the Downtown which includes Crescent Park.

All is well and the merchants want you down there but now we are hearing perhaps it is not what we have been led to believe. Or at least between 8 pm and 4 am when the proposed patrol is set to go out and about.

From my off the record conversations with more than a few business owners something needs to be done now rather than later.

Because if things continue on the road they have been going in the opinion of more than a few former and also presently operating Downtown business owners I spoke to there are certain elements that are making the Downtown less attractive for honest locals and visitors alike.

Now are these “unsettling issues” happening just at night? The answer to that is no.

Now this is not an empirical statement but this past Tuesday afternoon it took me no less than five minutes walking around the exterior to see a couple of people injecting themselves with what may have been insulin - but likely not - just south of the Art Gallery.

Yup right there in broad daylight and in plain view.

Did I call the police? Nope, not at all I am not an agent of the MJPS.

What they do, or do not do - if you believe some of the business owners I spoke to - is not a topic of this opinion piece.

All I can say is I did see the MJPS out a couple of times this summer walking the beat about 9 am when I was down doing some banking and I did see an officer with a police dog in Crescent Park in the afternoon about a month ago.

But how much the MJPS puts into walking the beat is something that they are not publicly releasing.

It might be in the MJPS budget but given the opaque nature of their budget they submit to Council on an annual basis for approval makes no mention - not one iota - about what the MJPS spends on foot patrols. All I can do is to leave it at that.

Over the last little while - and this is my anecdotal observation - there are more than a few neighbourhoods, and not just the Downtown, struggling with major problems associated with addiction and the effects it is having.

I have personally spoken to people, who in their younger years had plenty of run-ins with the Moose Jaw Police at the Brunny (former Brunswick Hotel) and just hated the MJPS with a passion.

But today they would just love to see the MJPS spend a few weeks cleaning out their Home Street neighbourhood given the rise of meth houses and the associated petty crimes going on.

Their solution is to erect eight foot fences and get a German Shepherd to stop the petty theft they have endured.

I also hear the same thing from people in the older areas of the city down in the flats west of 2nd Avenue NW and how, in their opinion, crime is growing in their neighbourhood and they need a stronger police presence. And if the MJPS does show up to actually start charging people with the petty thefts they are habitually up to it will be a modern day miracle.

I have also heard the same things from residents when it comes to the areas near the former Bun and Bottle and west out past Prince Arthur School. Petty theft - likely driven by drugs - is occurring just far too regularly. Ordinary honest people, in what is seen as an economically poorer neighbourhood, are witnessing the effects of drugs and the crime that associates with it far, far too often.

One of the things I am hearing from people in other neighbourhoods facing some severe problems is that all that is going to happen is a crackdown in the Downtown is just going to move the problems from where it is publicly visible and a business nuisance to their neighbourhoods where it won’t be dealt with.

They fear their lack of a real voice as being poor residents is just going to see the problems compound in their neighbourhoods. And there is no help on the way.

I realize that this is not scientific and is at best just my own personal observations but the Downtown core, as well as other neighbourhoods, have been seeing a major decay in their social fabric and it is not a recent phenomena. It has been going on for some time.

It is just now, after it started to effect them, that the City is looking at starting what can be best described a Move Along initiative in the Downtown.

Winter is coming and if you can uproot the street people now - just before winter sets in - the largely seasonally homeless will find other areas to move to or better yet for some just move elsewhere permanently and hopefully not be back next April.

A couple of photos that two seasonally homeless people constructed inside of a calf shed outside a local lumber yard this summer - contributed photo

A couple of photos that two seasonally homeless people constructed inside of a calf shed outside a local lumber yard this summer - contributed photo

For those of you who don’t know it Moose Jaw becomes a different place at night then what you see in the daytime.

It is a city that is populated by the night owls, the unemployed, the lonely and the street people.

And no, despite some of the complaints out there, Moose Jaw does not simply roll up the sidewalks shortly after 9 pm and turn off all of the lights until 7 am. There is a different world out there.

The streets come alive with a different crew - one often driven by hopelessness, ingenuity, vagrancy, social non-compliance and depending on how you look at it either people with serious mental and addiction problems or in the words of more than a few the largest amount of skids west of Pinkey Road.

The world of street people is, believe it or not, alive and well and down right notorious in Moose Jaw.

Areas where the street people hang out, or maybe rather where they are drawn, have either closed the sit down portion of their 24 hour restaurants from 11 pm to 5 am, or in the case of at least one convenience store turned off the cheap products that was drawing the wrong customers in the wee hours of the morning.

All done in an effort to have the street people quit hanging out and move along elsewhere.

So what are the businesspeople I spoke to telling me about the need for an extra patrol and an enhanced police presence in the Downtown?

Well it is two-fold.

Some of it is because of the actual thefts going on and for others it is all about new development in the Downtown core.

There is no way you can revive places like River Street and the area of High Street if God forbid you make it more accessible and offer services to seasonal homeless and the addicted, is what I was flat out told.

Nobody is going to go Downtown if they do not feel safe or they are continually hassled for spare change or cigarettes. It adds a lot of extra effort to local businesses to keep the area clean.

As one business owner told me it is an early morning chore out behind her business to pick up needles and excrement.

Disgusting as hell and it has been going on for not months but rather years.

This is one business owner who has felt the effect of homelessness and addiction first hand. And quite frankly had enough of it.

There is hope with the Commissioners patrolling and tied into the MJPS that it is not going to be happening anymore.

On the development side, no matter if they have not officially announced it, there is once again action going on behind the scenes to fire up the hotel development on the 0 Block of River Street.

You know the very thing Mayor Clive Tolley spoke about getting accomplished during his election campaign. The -0 Block River Street revitalization project is up and running behind the scenes and the word is it is a go.

Now I cannot say for sure if it was the still proposed River Street hotel development that helped motivate Mayor Tolley to ask the Mission to reconsider their plans to build a new men’s homeless shelter on River Street right across from the Moose Jaw Event’s Centre (former Mosaic Place) but in my opinion it may have played a large part in it.

As one Downtown business owner told me it was a case of “if you build it they will come” before giving me their sound reasonings for the men’s shelter being erected elsewhere - if at all.

Yes in many ways Moose Jaw has become are some really ugly moving islands of petty and growing criminality out there. Criminality that is taking away from honest people’s - both local and visitor - of the Downtown.

The pilot program is designed to do one thing. And that is to nip something in the bud that in reality has been in full bloom for years.

A deterrent? Yes.

A solution? Unlikely.

A way to catch some of the worst marauders in the Downtown and see that they are dealt with properly by the Courts? Well, maybe.

A really big maybe in a lot of people’s views.

One needs only to take a look at some of the things that have happened over the last year to illustrate how tough it is going to be to make a dent in the criminality that is going on Downtown.

For example take a look at the City Centre Mall located on Main Street.

The old Simpson-Sears store seems to be a jewel in the Downtown crown. Clean, well maintained and modern - the Mall has itself been targeted.

Targeted very innovatively as a safe place to hang out, stay warm and sleep during the cool nights without - for a time at least - the owners of the building knowing exactly what was going on.

The Mall was targeted by street people who would have someone sneak into the building and hide just before it closed for the night. Then once the building was locked the person who hid in the building would go and let their friends inside.

As far as I am told the building was not targeted for theft but rather was used as a warm and safe place to sleep.

The undoing of the scheme was when the ownership finally started to ask who didn’t lock up? And why was the building left open in the early morning? The only fault in the plan being as they walked out early in the AM they had to leave a door open.

Were charges laid?

Nope the street people simply moved along and in the words of a Downtown business owner “likely looking for another building to roost in.”

This is just one of the unique ways people who are either on the street, or homeless, managed to find a warm place when it was cold outside.

I am told about other places where the homeless have found shelter.

Everything from hiding around an external furnace at a public building or when that is unavailable sheltering right next to a power transformer and gain heat from it.

It is something the new inter-agency group Square One is set to advocate for. Moose Jaw’s homeless. Or is it Moose Jaw’s seasonally homeless? It is an issue easily up for debate.

Then there are other people who spend their entire nights out roaming the streets either on foot or riding a bicycle.

Many of them are harmless as they go through the Downtown garbages either looking for bottles or picking through the ashtrays. Smoking is not a cheap habit.

Are businesses scared to speak up about what is really going on?

Yes.

Because it makes them look like they are just mean hearted to the people out there who are struggling while at the same time they worry about retribution.

They don’t want their names mentioned as they fear retribution from a “crowd that doesn’t give a damn about anything.”

More than a couple I spoke to told me about last year’s Downtown warming centre and the problems they saw it bringing to their businesses. Some of the businesses were blocks away but still took a hit because of it.

I can remember a former business owner telling me years ago how the alley behind her Main Street business had turned into a place where drugs were sold and used. The MJPS was informed and pictures sent but the problem still existed.

“I never felt better to get out of the Downtown,” she told me after she sold her business. Oh yeah at what she saw as a loss of the real value.

These are the things the business community has told me. It is not a very good situation.

But is there another side of the story?

For many there is and it is one where they see mental illness, abandonment and issues rooted in abuse that are driving a lot of the problems that are turning up in not just the Downtown core.

Problems that are costing things such as the healthcare system not thousands, not hundreds of thousands of dollars, not even millions of dollars but tens of millions of dollars on an annual basis.

Things that the right efforts and resources may solve.

But then again the question can easily be asked what have the professionals solved when it comes to the “unsettling” things occurring? How much has systems based upon grant, after grant, after yet another grant really solved?

Where is the empirical proof anything has worked?

I remember having a debate at coffee a couple of years back about how there are people who quit drugs after they found Jesus.

My coffee pal’s point was that all the addict had done was replaced one addiction with another and never really solved the problem.

My counter point was perhaps a deflection and that was what was better someone hounding you as a drug addict and stealing your change from your car’s console or someone who hounded you about Jesus and was apologizing for taking your change?

I will admit this is in no way the Moose Jaw of my childhood.

A Moose Jaw that was alive and breathing the good life that a growing population and construction brought to the city.

A time that I see as more peaceful than it seems to be now. Perhaps it is a view of a Moose Jaw wrapped up in the naivety of childhood. I just don’t know.

The question though lies with what to do about all of it?

Do we hit the Downtown with a armoured Medieval gauntlet shattering what it has become?

Do we throw in the major resources necessary to start to turn the personal situations around?

Do we listen to agencies that in reality have failed over decades and now are out fishing for grants?

Or do we simply ignore it and hope a long cold winter takes care of the problem naturally?

And what about civil liberties? Is riding a bike - even if you pull a trailer - mean you are up to criminal no good? Don’t some people ride a bicycle as their main means of transportation?

What I can say with a high degree of accuracy is that sticking our heads in the sand and trying to rah rah the problems away has yet to result in a solution. And unlikely to do so.