Eyes on crime

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This article was published 19/07/2022 (793 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BY CODY SELLAR

STAFF REPORTER

POINT DOUGLAS

A longtime community leader wants the city and its citizens to shift its approach to crime prevention.

“It has to be a sophisticated response, not just a knee-jerk, tough-on-crime response. It’s got to be smart on crime,” said Sel Burrows, founder and co-ordinator of Point Powerline, a hotline that acts as an intermediary between citizens and police in Point Douglas.

Point Powerline has had success dealing with issues and crime in Point Douglas by making it easier for more people to report what’s going on around them, Burrows said. Now, he’s asking for the city to better utilize this same concept.

The community advocate is speaking out after the Downtown Community Safety Partnership proposed a network of 10 to 20 cameras be installed downtown.

“If you want to convict people for crimes, having cameras is great. My preference is preventing crimes from happening,” he said.

Burrows outlined three steps he’d like to see implemented.

First, private security guards, particularly downtown, should be recruited “as additional eyes on the street.” He would like the city to negotiate with security companies for their employees to simply watch the street and report, but not to physically intervene.

Second, he called for the creation of a Punjabi-language tip line, as Burrows said people from the taxi industry have expressed an interest in being able to help watch the streets. Having a line in the “dominant language of taxi drivers” would make it easier for drivers, who spend all day roaming the city, to report crime.

“You’re not going to get 100 per cent of the drivers participating, but that isn’t necessary because the bad guys have no idea which ones are participating or not,” he said.

Third, he’d like to see property management companies have greater power to evict suspected drug dealers. He said the Residential Tenancies Branch is too rigid in its rules to evict and demands too high a level of proof.

While property crimes, drug crimes, traffic crimes and others have decreased between 2020 and 2021, according to the Winnipeg Police Service’s recently released annual statistical report, violent crime has increased by five per cent. Gun- and knife-related calls ticked up 15 per cent in that time and 27 per cent over five years.