Civilization is doomed if criminal behaviour isn’t stopped
By Lethbridge Herald on December 14, 2022.
Editor:
Roll shutters, locked toilets, no toilets, vacated stores, people scared to walk the streets of the city and then a letter from Ryan McAdams – “Downtown businesses deserve better” with accompanying picture. A mess left behind for a business person to clean up – repeatedly.
More police are not the answer, laws need to be obeyed. Who wants the work of enforcement? In America, some service station operators hire armed guards to protect their operations from blatant daytime theft. Recruitment in the American army is down 15,000, National Guard down 7,500.
Who wants to sign on to do enforcement at any level, anywhere, anymore?
Criminals have control. Where are we heading? In Lethbridge what officers are trained to do is often hijacked by law firms and the courts protecting their “clients” from “harassment.” The stress must be surreal!
Taxpayers get hosed by a system keeping “clients” safe, unmolested and free to riddle the city with messes, crime and hopelessness.
All of the above is leading to a weak society taken over by those profiting by crime, super huge bucks at play, all out of the taxpayer’s pocket. I have no idea how some of the creeps profiting by it all sleep at night in their castles.
How can police officers do their job? They are bombarded with cultural sensitivity, awareness training – better to understand how and why some in the population are what they are and act the way they do. There’s a special lane in this life for those folks, and the “training” had better connect with that reality.
Recently, LPS “completed new ethics training.”
How much of this can the taxpayer, and the officer being bombarded with it, sustain? The insidious picture in the Herald accompanying the Ryan McAdams piece is graphic proof of where this leads.
A drunk was removed from a store because he was drunk. Later it was learned the man had a disorder and should not have been discriminated against. The disorder – “a degenerative disorder of being intoxicated.” Can we buy a break?
A few years back officers stopped a car they had suspicions about. They found the rear seat full of stolen goods. That case was thrown out of court when the defence successfully argued that police did not have reasonable grounds to stop that car. Is stuff like this believable?
Until we as a civilization figure out how to stop crimes by gathering up then repairing back to productivity those lost souls committing misdemeanours affecting progress of a civilization, we are doomed long before concentrations of Co2 in the atmosphere knock us off. The stink down here on the ground will suffocate us first.
A.W. Shier
Lethbridge
16-15
The only thing you forgot, Alvin, was that ‘taxes are too high’. Police States are expensive, you know.
Sophie, A.W. has a point, rambling as it may be, that simply throwing more and more money into “awareness” rather than catching and treating [ and yes, sometimes that means depriving them of thier freedom for thier good and the good of sociey ] the criminals in this city has proven not to work.
Your suggestion taxes in this city are so high because we are living in a Police state is ludicrous. It is precisely because no one on council has the courage to direct funds to remediation rather than accomodation that things are getting worse.
If you are that dead set against Policing, next time you are accosted or have a break in call a charity or a church to come assist you and save us all some tax dollars.
There is a difference between ‘awareness’ and ‘care’. I am an advocate for care.
To sum the positions presented by y’all:
BTW, I wasn’t saying we live in a police state, I am saying that Alvin and others are quivering for one, like a dog for a tossed ball. You can spend tax money building institutions of care, or spend tax money on institutions of incarceration. But mainly you are clicking your ruby red shoes and wishing to be back in Kansas – which worked for Dorothy and Toto, but maybe not in this case.
A good guiding principle is to follow: Ask yourself what is good, right and just?
agreed, except i feel we may be closer to a police than one might be willing to acknowledge.
Yes, these folks want their freedom by installing a police officer on every corner.
But that’s no less consistent than wanting the homeless off the street while denying them shelters; or wanting services without paying taxes; or having government oversight without a government; or raising the heat without the risk of melting their snowflake characters.
bullseye!
After several visits to the Lethbridge London Road area, our family decided in 2014 that this is where we want our children to grow up and attend college and university.
How disappointing! Because my husband frequently travels and I work full-time, we have had to fortify of our shed, yard, and home to protect our property.
Due to her recent changes as a young woman, my daughter had to use the restroom at the downtown transit bus terminal when she was taking public transportation a few years ago. In order to resolve the issue, which took time, she required a restroom.
She called me at work after she finished, horrified. A young native woman was using the toilet to wash her hair while babbling to herself, she was naked and had water on the floor. My daughter quickly entered and locked a stall.
This individual knocked on her stall door, wanting to borrow a pipe. She didn’t respond because she was afraid. This person tried once more and pretended to know her.
My daughter stated that I don’t possess a pipe and don’t know you. The individual resumed her babbling with herself. My daughter quickly left when she was finished, noticing that the person was now partially clothed. She called me in fear!
My children must use public transportation, but we have shown them alternative routes to avoid the downtown terminal at all costs. They need to go to the westside library in light of the addicts and criminals who frequent the one downtown, since It is not child friendly.
After school is over, we have made the decision to sell our house this spring and relocate to a smaller town away from this city. It was a terrible choice to move here!
Recently it was reported the Lethbridge police are undemanned compared to other communities, and to bring them up to those levels needed over 40 members. This is far from a police state! Only the criminals and addicts are complaining!
what was she horrified by? nothing criminal in any of this. hopefully, if one truly considers the event, the most horrifying thing is that we as a society remain so full of ourselves, so judgemental and mostly indifferent – such that we have still far too people among us that are so desperate and so alone in their horror.
People like you are why my family is moving!
Hope you find what you consider a safe place (and some therapy).
hope you find the cold hearts you feel a need to surround yourselves with. quite an approach to life, which is shared by so many, the idea that it is all about you always having yours, ever feeling entitled and above, and to hell with those that have issues far beyond the realm your underdeveloped hearts are able to find space for. can’t say i will miss you or any of your mindset.
There are a lot of good people in this city! It is sad that your daughter couldn’t use a washroom in a city facility without fear. It is even sadder to see the comments regarding he issue. Judging by some of the comments, it must be some of the homeless/addicts.
what fear – fear of the reality that there are people suffering severely? the lady in question caused no harm. the greater concern is how homelessness, mental health, and desperate living get conflated as being the basis of criminal.
what is most sad is the daughter being seemingly as underdeveloped as her parents.
Your poor little demented mind can’t comprehend how a 12 year old girl, entering a washroom and seeing such a sight could feel.
The drugs have shrivelly your poor little mind to a black hole!
It is shamefull to see such ingorance.
Ignore him and SophieR . . . they actually believe they can post under their monikers and remain anonymous.
They don’t understand that they are easily found out by court order. They will continue to post after you thinking they are winning some prize, as they dig themselves further into a deep hole.
It only adds strength to AW Shier’s letter to the editor.
yes, there will come a day when having an opinion that may be contrary to consensus/official narrative will be made criminal. and, based on the support expressed here for police that harass and spy and break laws to target contrary folk, like ms phillips, simply because they will support anything that supports their feelings, i may live long enough yet to see that ugly day.
I agree AW Shier with much of what you stated. Police are frustrated. The judicial and penal systems are a mess and lawyers have found every loophole of the many to use to get off their guilty clients.
LPS is understaffed, but catch and release costs them more valuable time.
Last month there was a great article in the National Post that reported a few studies which relfected that Canadians have had enough of their cities being over-run and nothing been done. They want change and see that harm reduction failed and pumping billions into housing has failed.
Some highlights, sorry this may be a long post to include these:
Canadians are not only done with all of this, but they’re increasingly convinced that their governments are actively making it worse.
Of 1,534 poll respondents, a clear majority (58 per cent) reported that “homelessness is a problem in my community,” with more than a third (38 per cent) reporting that homelessness has “increased acts of violence in my community.”
And in B.C., that sentiment is almost universal: An incredible 87 per cent of B.C. poll respondents called homelessness a “problem” while 72 per cent said it was causing increased violence.
A mere seven per cent think that government is “making things better.” And almost everyone else thinks government is doing nothing at all.
It’s not for lack of funding. In B.C. alone, the most recent budget earmarked $633 million for spending on homelessness. This included nine-figure funding to implement a “permanent housing plan” for the approximately 3,000 British Columbians who received temporary shelter spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic. With a price tag of $264 million, this works out to about $88,000 per homeless individual.
In Ontario, homelessness spending is expected to hit $446 million for the next fiscal year — and this rises to more than $1 billion when spending on housing is looped in.
And yet, by almost every metric, Canadian homelessness continues to get worse.
Meanwhile, the fatal stabbing of Burnaby RCMP Const. Shaelyn Yang on Oct. 18 was only the most conspicuous example of a nationwide phenomenon of neighbourhoods witnessing local parks turned into cauldrons of violence and crime.
In Victoria, homeless encampments that began forming in the city’s Beacon Hill Park in 2020 were soon host to a “life-altering” attack on a developmentally delayed 15-year-old, the discovery of a full-sized chop shop for stolen bikes, and a van fire in which one man was killed.
In Toronto, a major encampment in the city’s Trinity Bellwoods Park caused a 450 per cent increase in fires, the scattering of more than 10,000 used needles in just three months and the routine uttering of threats against passersby and parks staff.
In an August press release, a coalition of Vancouver women’s centres warned that tent cities were hubs of violence against women. “With every tent city, we see a dramatic increase in gender-based violence. Women are threatened, harassed, beaten, and raped,” said Alice Kendall, Executive Director of the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre.
According to the Leger poll, more than half of Western Canadians report that “homelessness makes me feel unsafe in my community.” In B.C., the sentiment was shared by an overwhelming 70 per cent of respondents.
In just 2021, governments bought up more than a quarter billion dollars’ worth of Vancouver real estate to house 767 homeless people — an average rate of $351,000 per bed.
Paired with this has been an aggressive focus on harm reduction; the idea of making drug use safer without any underlying pressure for addicts to get clean. In 2003, Vancouver’s InSite became North America’s first state-sanctioned facility to provide medical supervision of illicit drug use. Now, safe consumption sites are either open or planned in all 10 provinces.
But as homelessness and addiction continue to get worse, even progressive circles are beginning to question the idea that the issue can ever be truly curbed without more proactive strategies to get homeless people off illicit drugs and into managed mental health treatment.
In 2019, Leonard Krog — a longtime B.C. NDP MLA turned mayor of Nanaimo, B.C. — received widespread press attention for calling on the province to begin forcibly institutionalizing homeless people exhibiting severe mental illness.
In August, he proposed that British Columbians who were routinely overdosing should be forced into involuntary treatment.
In August, 49-year-old Chris Schwede would become the most recent person to die in a Victoria, B.C. tent encampment.
He was only steps from one of the city’s many safe consumption sites, but had died of a suspected drug overdose in his tent, where nobody was able to see until morning that he had stopped breathing.
“There’s no such thing as safe supply because Chris was on safe supply and he’s in a morgue right now,” Trausch said.
I will stop there, but there is plenty of evidence so show what is not working now and Lethbridge needs to wake-up!
We have self proclaimed advocates for the homeless running around with little to none experience, non-profits that only enable and increase the issues and they are growing, communities who dump their issues on us, condemnation from indigenous communities when we try to take steps to stop this, and a useless court system.
Watching what is happening across Canada I agree that civilization is doomed if we do not change.
bring on the brownshirts and the reichstag! ve vill have order!!
You really need to get help!
Morons are beyond help ew. Sometimes all you can do is wonder what color he suns are in their world and feel sorry for them.
“what color (sic) he suns” … is someone else enjoying a little pipe-time?
I get it. It’s stressful to be angry all the time … a little escape is necessary. Just don’t drive.
Grammar Nazi hard at work Sophie ? If you are not a failed therapist drumming up business I am led to believe you may run a Pot shop…you seem to like drugs a lot and advocate for their use a fair bit here.
have me put away for being a soft heart. you may soon have such a dystopia, where homelessness is the crime, rather than the greed, graft and self service that creates the brunt of societal and planetary issues.
You really are a moron.
We are far from a police state as some try to ‘whine’ about. Lethbridge has 165 members while the average police-to-population ratio in Canada, shows it should be closer to 212 officers.
Working as a licensed security guard in Lethridge and having to call police many times dealing with homeless/addicts for assaults, threats, property damage, etc., it was clear just how stretched their manpower was.
I got to know some of those members and they were burning out and tired and some wondered if they would continue, but said they loved the job.
We need more boots on the ground to end the gong-show, the complete disrespect for our city, businesses and residents that is playing out on our streets, but I agree, the judicial system needs to get their act together along with lawmakers so police who enforce the laws actually see it making a difference.
Without deterrents, people take advantage of anything and anyone they can!
We are facing another world war, techniccally we are already in one, and the world is a powder keg.
We need to get our acts together in Canada so we can deal with what is ahead of us.