Increased patrolling won’t reduce crime in London Road area
By Letter to the Editor on April 15, 2021.
Editor,
I am writing in response to “London Road residents fed up with rising crime” by Dale Woodard.
The London Road Association felt there were positive or partial solutions to rising crime rates, as quantified by posts on Facebook, which includes such things as supposedly “suspicious persons.”
I hope that everyone has enough sense to see how problematic that is.
The police exist to enforce a class-stratified society.
This is their raison-d’être. This is why property crime is punished more severely than interpersonal violence.
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread.” – Anatole France
I am writing to inform your readership that increased police patrolling in the London Road neighbourhood would not reduce crime.
A positive solution to the (purported) rise in crime is for the people of the London Road neighbourhood to: turn on our lights at night, lock our doors at night, get to know our neighbours from a safe two-metre distance, get outside, and go for walks.
An active community that is alive and present in the street, and that is really physically there for each other, will deter crime more than our police can.
Lethbridge is a city where our police are very well known to abuse their powers, and they target people that they don’t like.
Many of us have seen uniformed police patrols harass legitimate citizens of Lethbridge, who are people that should be here, and have every right to be here. Volunteer/police enforcement is known to disproportionately target minorities.
Even after adjusting for drug use patterns and other risk factors associated with incarceration, a study by Barker et al. (2015) found that indigenous street-involved youth were still significantly more likely to be incarcerated than their non-indigenous peers.
This injustice is of such a magnitude that it is an embarrassment to Canada on the world stage.
In any case, a reputable police force would not want volunteer thugs harassing people on the street.
We should have kept the safe injection site open, and the city should consider opening a free restaurant to provide for the desperately poor people in the downtown, or set aside an hour of the evening when some restaurants could provide food for free.
Dr. Timothy Schwinghamer and Lane Anderson
-1
I think you should open the “free” restaurant at your expense Doctor. A large number of residents voted for the very people that brought this problem to the London Road area. Swim in it.
You state: Even after adjusting for drug use patterns and other risk factors associated with incarceration, a study by Barker et al. (2015) found that indigenous street-involved youth were still significantly more likely to be incarcerated than their non-indigenous peers.
What I find rather amazing is you signed your name as “Doctor” so I assume you and your partner are educated. You use a study that actually does not apply to Lethbridge and then pretend it does. Then allude to a bias police force based on this wonderous piece of data. There are always exceptions to the rule. Lethbridge is one of those exceptions.
Statistically accurate data can easily be accumulated and I am sure are by various agencies in Lethbridge. Starting with the “knowns”.
What is known is Lethbridge is adjacent to the largest Reserve in Canada
What is known is Lethbridge is subject to a mass exodus every spring of Indigenous people who leave the Reserve and come to Lethbridge.
What is known is Lethbridges numbers of vagrants rises proportionally and the visible Minority becomes a visible MAJORITY of the people sleeping on our streets and in our parks
What is known is in excess of 90%+ of those people are drug addicts and/or alcohol dependent, attended the SCS, and were confirmed as Indigenous using Hamilton Carpets Video System, during the same period.
What is known is 90% of the Indigenous drug addicts also seem to be “finding children’s stolen bicycles” more often then other “species of vagrant” and deciding the bicycle is theirs! That does not mean others are not stealing bicycles, what it means is if 9 of 10 stolen bicycles being ridden are ridden by indigenous “statistically” the next few points are valid and also knowns.
What is known statistically is drug addicts without enough income to support their habit will resort to crime.
What is known is those KNOWN statistics result in a skewed number of Indigenous being charged with a crime. (Which then allows people to make assumptions of rampant racism in a police force using the “knowns against them”).
What is known is as a result of being charged you have a higher likelihood of ending up in jail
What is known is if you end up in jail then your brilliant quote becomes true, but not for the reason you would like us to believe!
Each city in Canada is different, so a blanket statement does not apply and, tends to be used by self righteous people who insist all others that are part of the conversation are racist! I am of the species that if you cannot be honest enough to actually face the “actual problem for what it is”, then you are the racist, not me!
As a sidebar, statistically there are more Asians in jail or Italians, then whites if we talk about Toronto. Why? More gangs made up of minorities committing the crimes. Statistically there would be more blacks in jail that are from the Bronx in New York, then Indigenous because Black criminal gangs would outweigh any Indigenous Criminal gangs…get the point?
Facing the problem means that Lethbridge should be asking what it can do for the Blood Reserve to make things more palatable for their residents and demanding those things from the Province and the Feds. Every year you have mothers and fathers of the indigenous youth, roaming the streets of Lethbridge trying to find their family and wanting them to come home. So why are we setting up Free Restaurants, Doctor and partner? Why are we not working with the Blood and Kainai to draft solutions to a KNOWN problem and stop with the lipstick? I would suggest from your narrative you cannot even identify the problem, so how do you two ever plan on contributing to the solution?
In 2016 when the Blood Reserve Police proclaimed that all NON Native Vehicles found on the Reserve would be subject to be stopped and searched. The drug dealers stopped going to the Reserve. Guess where they set up shop? Lethbridge! Now , guess what the addict on the Blood did? Guess what year the problem EXPLODED in Lethbridge? If you want to present research, there is no need to guess, the data is available!
The Doctor Tims and the Lane Anderson’s of this city are the real problem.
They will vote on council those who have the same shallow view of reality-scary!
What Lane Anderson & T. Schwinghamer present can only be described as a forum for bashing our police and residents of London Road. Reality is that crime has hugely escalated in the area and residents are at their wits end sick of seeing natives staggering around; shooting up in every park; riding around on stolen bicycles, littering our streets with new free clothes, breaking into yards and homes; filling our community with their bad vibe; the list goes on and on. Anderson and Schwinghamer have the nerve to say these addicts ‘belong here’. Belonging and being accepted might be possible IF these people had something positive to offer. But to come here with NO skills; only addictions and personal problems looking for handouts and resorting to crime all the while dragging our society down is why we don’t accept them. Where these lost souls should remain is on the Blood Reserve with ‘their people’. Where are the ‘Elders’? What is the Blood Band doing to rein in the problem? Our Police are doing their best and more police presence would certainly help if more powers were afforded them. I feel for our LPS having to constantly put themselves in harms way. Your solutions telling us to turn on lights at night are laughable and do more harm to nature than to deter crime. Solutions should start on the Blood Reserve.
I have to expand on my last comment because I take such exception to the Doctor’s and Lane Andersons Rudimentary analysis!
If you live in New York and blacks account for 80% of the crime and officers arrest blacks, are they racist? What makes a system racist is if the judicial system treats the 20% non blacks differently when it comes to justice. Where the issue lies when it comes to the LAPS or New York Cops or Toronto Cops is when you are confronted daily with a certain sector of society being responsible for crimes, you tend to pre-suppose because of your constant exposure to the same groups doing the same crimes. Once you presuppose trouble before you even reach a scene, and your conditioning makes you expect a certain minority group, then you have gone beyond conditioning to being anti-group or racist. Presumption causes a Police Officer that is responding to a grocery store robbery stopping short of the grocery store when he sees a person whose expertise is grocery store robbery walking the streets. But, that is conditioning and knowing whom generally commits the crime. Some call it conditioned instinct others call it racist.
So in its simplistic state Police become bias because of what they are exposed too. A New York officer is not a black racist anymore than a LAPS officer is an Indigenous Racist. They have both been conditioned to what they face every every day. So if you transplanted a NYPD officer to Lethbridge that person would likely hone in on every black person in Lethbridge first and in time would realize its the Indigenous he is confronting every day.
So the bias is a product of conditioning. If you believe as your letter tends to lead the reader, that the LAPS are Racist, then its a product of conditioning. There is two ways to alleviate conditioning. Have the minority group stop committing the majority of the crimes or have Officers ignore crimes committed by minority groups. Which would you prefer Doctor and Lane?
Sidebar- I was in the Navy for 28 years. When a ship or submarine visited a seaport the Police, who police that seaport, had a bias against Fisherman and Sailors, why? Because on the waterfront it was Fisherman and Sailors that caused 80-90% of their calls. So many times while in Uniform I was stopped by Police to find out “why I was not on the waterfront and why was I so far from my Submarine or Ship. Do you think they were “Sailor Racists” or do you think conditioning made them anti-sailor/ Fisherman?
It is not a coincidence that in all cases the groups that commit the crimes are the people with the least in society, with the exception of the Mafia and the Motorcycle gangs, the crime is based on survival, whereas the latter is greed.
So would Lane and the good Doctor be willing to set up free restaurants and clothing etc for Medicine Hat vagrants in Lethbridge too? I would say, your response would be “let Medicine Hat deal with their problem”. My response to you would be “open a Free Restaurant on the Blood Reserve”. Sponsor a housing project and an SCS. I would bet you that soon afterward the problems in Lethbridge would significantly minimized! While you are at it, make it so Addicts are allowed to carry drugs for personal use only on the Reserve, and make it illegal in Lethbridge and see what happens. Suddenly every vagrant would aspire to be Blood/Kainai again! Families would be re-united, it would be a win win win!
Since my arrival in Lethbridge 11 years ago, I find more and more people who do not understand their own problems here. They will not call a spade a spade because its Socially unacceptable to point out a minority even if its obvious thats the problem. Instead you dance around the problem. So I say again, how do you solve the problem when you don’t even recognize it, are afraid to put a name on it ?