Same old strategies won’t fix downtown

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/03/2024 (542 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It seems Winnipeggers aren’t feeling very safe downtown.

The 2024 Winnipeg Police Service Citizen Survey shows only about half of surveyed Winnipegers felt safe in the core, and only 12 per cent felt “very safe” travelling through during the day. The percentage of respondents who feel very or reasonably safe downtown has dropped; 55 per cent said they did in this year’s survey, compared to 63 in 2019.

Concerns about downtown safety are nothing new in Winnipeg — nor are concerns about safety citywide. The city continues to grapple with various social crises which lead to spikes in criminal activity, be it in the form of increased annual homicide tolls, or in certain criminal activities, i.e. catalytic converter theft. Certainly, high-profile incidents like the stabbing death of a man at Millennium Library contribute to this atmosphere of worry.

To some extent, the debate over downtown safety has represented a geographic divide. Residents of Winnipeg’s suburbs are often accused of unfairly maligning the core by those who live in or closer to it — and in some cases they may be guilty of just that. This back and forth between core and suburbs is part of Winnipeg’s pattern, too. It is true that people’s perception of the area is not the same as the bare facts, but the fear is not impotent. It ends up creating what it proposes — the greater the fear, the more people abandon the area, paving the way for trouble.

The problem with the conversation about crime, and fear of it, in Winnipeg is that it has long been circular, going around and around, and it seems to be playing out the same time this lap, too.

Winnipeg Police Chief Danny Smyth, responding to survey results suggesting low satisfaction among Winnipeggers with police performance, has vowed to improve. Winnipeg Police Board chair Markus Chambers and Smyth have both suggested that adding more police foot patrols will help. Critics rightly bristle at that suggestion. “More cops on the street” has long been a proposed solution, but it hasn’t fixed the problem before and is unlikely to fix it now.

If downtown is unsafe, it is not because there is a lack of uniformed officers going up and down the sidewalk, preventing undesirable elements from coming into contact with “good, honest” Winnipeggers, who in turn will presumably feel safer knowing there are officers in sight. If it is less safe it’s because there is a greater number of people in the area being driven to desperation by the conditions of life in Winnipeg, who are more likely to be a danger to themselves or others as a result.

There is a vision for solving this problem which has been tried, and another that has not been tried (at least not completely). We have tried putting more cops in patrol cars, or on foot. The police budget has grown time and time again. To what end? At what point must we admit that more officers do not equal less crime?

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What we have not tried is what community advocates have called for ad nauseam: greater addictions services, poverty-fighting measures, enhanced mental health services, more affordable housing, and other measures meant to make the modern world more livable to people who have the hardest time in it. And yes, supervised consumption sites, which are strangely opposed by people who also claim to avoid downtown out of fear of encountering addicts on the street.

It’s time to take an honest swing at the holistic approach we’ve never really put our all into. And more than anything, it’s time to quit talking about it, taking polls on it and going round and round, and take meaningful action, finally.