City hopes to curb ‘undesirable’ behaviours with Public Spaces Bylaw
By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on May 11, 2022.
LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com
City council on Tuesday unanimously gave second and third reading to an amended public spaces bylaw as recommended by the Community Safety Standing Policy Committee in April.
The purpose of the bylaw is to clearly outline expected behaviour in public spaces. The bylaw lists undesirable behaviours in the city including littering, public urination, spitting, graffiti, bullying, fireworks, weapons and panhandling.
A report to council says the intent of the bylaw is to define expected behaviour and educate the public about community standards, not to persecute people.
A report submitted by Duane Ens of Regulatory Services says the current streets bylaw has provisions which city police use to address undesirable behaviours here. A working group looking to revamp the bylaw determined that it’s not the best place for provisions related to managing public behaviour. Streets bylaws are intended as a way of addressing matters that impede traffic and in other communities, it’s common to have a separate bylaw to identify undesirable behaviours in public spaces.
The bylaw comes into effect July 1.
The purpose of the bylaw isn’t to persecute members of the public, councillor Rajko Dodic said while discussing it, but rather to provide education to the public about community standards.
Acting mayor Belinda Crowson told council during debate while she would vote for the bylaw she was concerned that everyone in the city would be treated equally under it. She also expressed concerns that some in the community might unfairly charge others with certain behaviours.
Peace officers will be enforcing the bylaw. Infractions come with the potential of a minimum $300 fine after other approaches such as warnings fail to stop certain conduct.
“It’s not targeting anybody specific,” said Dodic, adding certain behaviours are “causing angst” in the community.
City solicitor Brian Loewen said mechanisms are in place to deal with people who make fraudulent complaints or who abuse the system.
Input was gathered from different groups during the formation of the bylaw. They included downtown business owners, the police, the Reconciliation Lethbridge Advisory Committee, and city departments such as Transportation, Infrastructure, Regulatory Services and the City Solicitor’s Office.
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Downtown, good luck with this…… Not going to work.
Hopefully the list of “undesirable behaviours” includes drug use. The best way to ensure all are treated equally is to make sure everyone caught violating the bylaw is charged, no exception, and therefore, fair.
From what I see, the laws across this country ignore open drug use thanks to our illustrious PM Trudeau who seems to be focused on getting the whole county stoned and weak! He is the one who continues to push hard for SCS sites and harm reduction that have continued to prove to be a complete failure! 18 years of supervised sites in BC and every year the numbers of addicts, fatal overdoses, crime, homeless all increase, yet he continues to push it on us! It has spread and is quickly consuming BC, and BC’s answer now that it is failing is to legalize the very drugs that are killing them all! Yet Trudeau seems to think it works! I often wonder how many times he ‘goes on trips’ that fog his mind!
All are not treated equally, because if you or I went and sat in Galt Gardens with a beer each to have with lunch, we would be fined! Meanwhile the people who frequent that park are sharing their bottles of Vodka or shooting up drugs!
Let’s do a mind experiment:
Excuse me sir , but when you are finished urinating on the cenotaph, could we please have a discussion regarding your undesirable behaviour ?
Yeah , that might work
Is this what city council really wastes it’s time on?
We have littering laws, weapons laws, bullying laws, that are in place already but rarely enforced, perhaps due to the problems with our judicial and penal systems, serious issues where police spend hours doing paperwork just to have the perp kicked out on the street, charges dropped! I see multiple breaches that will be in this new Bylaw everyday downtown! Can’t see much change unless someone aggressively enforces it!
I am tired of seeing our streets over-run by homeless and addicts that are shipped here like cattle from other centers, sometimes by inter-shelter agreements, but also by Indigenous communities that ‘remove’ their trouble makers and share them with us. Such nice folks and neighbours! Then there is organized crime that needs the numbers on the streets to make money!
I wonder how the Bloods would like it if us Lethbridge, non-indigenous went to their communities and acted like their rejects do on our streets! Oh wait, we couldn’t because they have laws that do not allow anyone on ‘their’ land without permission, such as the Kainai (Bloods) have in place. So, they can kick their troublemakers off, even transport them here, while only those granted with permission can be on their land, with the exception of the highway.
Wonderful, that is just wonderful! Must be nice, especially when they then blame us for the demise of these poor people that are treated like cattle. Then, on the streets they face other services that only want to protect their jobs, increasing the number of clients so they have no issues keeping their job, while places such as the shelter, see major crime and drug issues worse than that of the old SCS.
It will probably be just like the distracted driving law, come in strong, then fizzle out. How many times a day do you see someone driving down the road with phone in hand!??
You can have all the laws you want, but without enforcement, they are useless! I applaud those that spent all their time and effort putting this new Bylaw into effect!
Right now we have a bunch of people on the streets that think they own the streets and often end up intimidating or attacking those that try to move them along from their property.
This is our city and we should be able to say that we will not allow our streets to be over-run, just like the Blood tribe says this is our land, you need permission to be here! The same people that throw up roadblocks when we try to take back our streets, in the name of Reconciliation!
I am not saying people need permission to be here. What I am saying is we should at the very least be able to take back our streets, our parks and our neighbourhoods!
Reconciliation! Does that mean we allow our city to be over-run by addicts, homeless and rejects from indigenous communities?
Time will tell how this Bylaw works!