For the streets of Quesnel to be saved from the wave of abundant crime happening right now, the help of other communities is required, and those other communities are likewise looking for the help of Quesnel.
A coalition of communities and businesses has been recently formed to confront courts and legislators over what they say is an epidemic of vandalism, shoplifting, assault, threats and rapid social decay that is leading to the death and harm of drug addicts and mental health sufferers, and dragging local businesses down with them.
The Save Our Streets coalition formed in late October with an inaugural membership of about 30, and since then it has doubled, including some from Quesnel.
“I’m encouraged that a growing coalition of B.C. businesses, recently including our own Quesnel Downtown Association, have formed Save Our Streets,” said mayor Ron Paull.
In addition to the Quesnel Downtown Association (QDA), the business safety advocacy group Quesnel In Action (QIA) has also joined.
“Lawlessness, along with our homeless and mental heath issues are sadly becoming the norm in our cities,” said QIA founder Debra McKelvie, whose downtown flower business she closed after getting repeatedly broken into and otherwise impacted. “I often hear ‘oh it’s happening everywhere, not just Quesnel.’ My response is ‘we don’t live everywhere, we live here.’”
The inability for any one community to motivate the courts and politicians to act differently is why banding together is so helpful, said Sandra Lewis of the QDA’s Safety and Security Committee. Her downtown business, too, has felt the impact of street-level crime and unhealthiness.
“You feel like you’re banging your head against a brick wall,” said Lewis, after years of degradation that drew in complex discussions with Quesnel businesses and agencies who turned to the police, legal experts and political figures who all pointed the finger of blame away from themselves. The Save Our Streets coalition is, she hoped, a launchpad for change because one community in isolation, even ones as large as the Lower Mainland and Victoria municipalities, haven’t effected change acting alone.
“The coalition is to gather us all together, and give us one big voice,” said Lewis. “We’re tired. We’e done. We’re finished with the rights of the offenders overriding the rights of those running businesses. It’s not about profits, it’s about the security of our streets.”
McKelvie, too, who got elected to municipal office on the platform of voicing downtown business safety concerns, said the issue long ago surpassed anything to do with marketing strategies or income inconvenience. Shop staff are afraid of grievous bodily harm, and businesses owners are facing altogether closure not piffling shoplifting worries. She remembered a victim impact statement campaign led by Evelyn Towgood that compiled hundreds of letters outlining the serious incidents afflicting Quesnel’s streets.
“But here we are years later and still we are at the mercy of continued violence, vandalism, theft, homelessness, and addiction issues, and a very frustrated RCMP compliment having little to no support after continued arrests of convicted prolific offenders,” said McKelvie.
“There are no consequences to the actions of the offenders,” was Lewis’s assessment. “We are not against the people on the street. We want our homeless to be homed. We want those who need help to get help. What we’ve had enough of is the destruction of property, the theft of property, and the personal safety threat to people.”
It is not a politically left, right or centre bundle of issues, said these Quesnel advocates. The suite of problems seem to have emerged slowly over a cross-section of governing parties and multiple ministers, and not in one fell policy swoop.
There may even have been solid sense behind many of the practices that have led to this current condition, they combined to say, but there were also gaps in the execution that persist today. In those gaps, legitimate businesses and safe-living people are running into costly and harmful conflict with those who are not on a healthy path.
The Save Our Streets coalition may be the microphone needed to get heard by the people who can close those gaps.
Both advocates encouraged other Quesnel business and social stakeholders to join up as well.
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