Arresting problems, not the afflicted, is the way to save downtown

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/12/2023 (626 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

My 72-year-old mother was assaulted downtown a couple of weeks ago.

She was attending my daughter’s holiday concert at Knox United Church on Edmonton Street. Because she wanted a good seat, she was dropped off early in front on the street while my stepfather parked the car.

My mother is one of the nicest and most caring humans alive. She’s also fairly street-smart, having worked downtown in more than one city helping people with mental-health and poverty issues.

It was about six o’clock and dark. As she stood in front of the steps of the church, waiting for my stepfather, she was suddenly approached by a woman who asked her for money.

My mother doesn’t carry cash. She apologized and said she didn’t have any.

The woman became agitated. My mother offered to help in other ways. The woman kept asking.

My mother repeated that she had none. The woman’s mood escalated. My mother tried to leave. The woman then punched her in the chest.

By this time, a female bystander intervened, pulling out her phone and announcing she was calling the police.

The woman turned away from my mother and attacked the bystander, punching her twice.

By this time, my stepfather arrived on the scene. He separated the woman and the bystander. Then, the woman punched him in the face.

After hearing the police were on the way, the woman left.

I arrived shortly afterwards. Consoling my mother, I was livid. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I desired revenge. I wanted that woman charged and punished.

What calmed me down was thanking my stepfather and the bystander. They are heroes.

And their heroism didn’t end there.

When police asked if anyone wanted to pursue criminal charges, no one did. My mother even asked if there was a way to help that woman, who she believed was suffering from a mental-health issue.

It was then that I realized that the woman was likely coming from the soup kitchen the church runs at dinnertime.

I made a financial donation to the church’s program soon after.

I wasn’t going to write about this story, but it seems kind of important now.

Last Friday afternoon, a 14-year-old girl was stabbed while walking with friends and a 17-year-old boy on Graham Avenue near Fort Street. The girl later died from her injuries.

The boy has been charged with second-degree murder in what Winnipeg Police Service spokesman Const. Jason Michalyshen said Tuesday was, “one of those investigations involving young people … making incredibly poor choices, poor decisions and life-altering decisions.”

A trial will see if he’s right. What definitely needs more investigation though is how Winnipeg’s downtown has been created by incredibly poor choices, poor decisions and life-altering decisions.

It’s been well-documented how seven years of provincial austerity agendas, tax cuts and funding re-allocations from Winnipeg’s downtown to Progressive Conservative-friendly constituencies have manufactured an unfolding crisis in the city’s core.

Ask anyone who works, lives or visits downtown and the verdict is universal: poverty, crime and addictions are the worst they’ve ever been.

What’s made things exponentially worse is the one-dimensional response of seven years of provincial PC rule.

This was epitomized in one of former premier Heather Stefanson’s final announcements before October’s provincial election; the Tories allocated $10 million to make “downtown more attractive” with 24 more officers, 75 surveillance cameras, lights and new police vehicles.

The announcement came just after a 17-year-old-boy was fatally stabbed while trying to protect his sister in virtually the same downtown spot as last Friday’s slaying.

It also came six months after the brutal stabbing of Tyree Cayer at the Millennium Library. A teenager pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in October.

It also came after Winnipeg police announced that crime was up nearly 25 per cent in 2022 (with violent crime at its highest level since 2009), most of it occurring downtown.

You get the point.

The “more officers, more cameras, more police cars” approach from the Stefanson and Brian Pallister governments did nothing to improve the situation. The same tragic events are still happening.

Can we take things seriously now?

Jail cells, criminal charges and more uniformed officers with guns will not reduce poverty, crime and addictions downtown — or anywhere else — no matter how many times politicians create and repeat catchphrases about them.

It’s time we stop being scared to try solutions proven to deal with these issues elsewhere, such as mental-health crisis units, safe injection sites and restorative justice systems.

It’s time to fund approaches that are working, such as the business-led Downtown Community Safety Partnership or the many non-profit and volunteer-run neighbourhood safety groups. The people involved in those efforts are heroes.

It’s time we realize violence will not be solved with violence but with compassion, kindness and a sense of relationality that’s supposed to be what this season, in particular, is about.

niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca