Downtown improving despite recent spate of violent attacks: BIZ spokesman

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This article was published 27/08/2018 (2761 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Despite a recent rash of violent incidents — including a vicious stabbing in Central Park and a daylight sexual assault along the river walk near Bonnycastle Park last week — Winnipeg’s downtown is changing for the better, an advocacy group says.

A Winnipeg Downtown Business Improvement Zone spokesman pointed to crime rates being up across the city, when asked on Monday about violent crime rates in the downtown area.

“This is not just impacting crime rates in the downtown, but the entire city and other communities as well,” Downtown BIZ director of safety and outreach Shawn Matthews wrote in an email, emphasizing city authorities’ recent issues in dealing with methamphetamine users.

The City of Winnipeg recently announced additional measures towards safety, Matthews said. The Downtown BIZ is also expanding its patrol program, bringing on four more patrollers in addition to the 20 already on staff.

“Despite the impact of certain crimes in our community, we see many positive changes in our downtown,” Matthews wrote.

On Monday, recent violence drove a Winnipeg father to call for action in an open letter penned to the mayor and sent to local media, after his stepson was attacked during an attempted robbery last weekend.

In the letter, Mike Enns emphasized a recent rash of 11 stabbings in a handful of days and the Aug. 21 sexual assault of an 18-year-old woman near Bonnycastle Park.

Enns also wrote about his 19-year-old stepson who was walking his girlfriend home after a late-night dinner the morning of Aug. 18, when they took a shortcut through Central Park around 1:50 a.m. Two men accosted them and forced them to the ground, and the 19-year-old was viciously attacked with fists and a blade, city police said.

“Of the near 20 stab and slash wounds inflicted on him, the majority were to his face, head and throat,” the letter reads. “He is incredibly lucky to be alive.”

The young man is home recovering now after a few days in hospital, though his injuries are “life-altering.”

Enns wants Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman to speak up and do something about rising violent crime rates.

“In a horrifying period of one and a half weeks of explosive and sensational violent crime, you have remained silent,” Enns writes in the open letter. He criticized the mayor’s social media postings, which he called “endless and cringe-worthy.”

“The one selfie we have yet to see is you standing alone in Central Park at night,” the letter reads.

Bowman received the letter on Monday and spoke with Enns, press secretary Jeremy Davis said.

“He primarily listened to a father who came dangerously close to losing a son,” an emailed statement reads in part.

Bowman also outlined some of the strategies he and the police are working on to increase public safety, Davis wrote.

“This includes increasing the police budget every year to the point of it being the largest police budget in the history of the city, bolstering foot patrol programs in the downtown, increasing lighting in areas known to be high risk for crime and working on ways to increase video surveillance that bolster video surveillance activity currently undertaken by police.”

According to the Winnipeg Police Service’s annual report, in 2017, violent crime — which includes assaults, robberies, uttering threats and homicide — jumped seven per cent from 2016, and was 10 per cent higher than the five-year average, city-wide.

Violent crime rates spiked the highest in the downtown: in 2017, there were 5,198.4 violent crimes per 100,000 people — 22.1 per cent more incidents than the five-year average from 2012-16.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca

Mike Enns' open letter to the mayor of Winnipeg