While a prime block downtown was a crime scene and inaccessible to the public on Friday, Cory Robin was frustrated.
He is both executive director of the BIA and a city councillor. He freely admits that there’s a lot of crime downtown, mostly break-ins. But the last three days have been beyond what’s become the norm.
Robin says in that time frame, by his count there were eight break-ins. Some businesses suffered it more than once.
“Here we have a closed-down street with a large police presence investigating,” he remarked, looking at the closed block of Third Ave. between Pine St. and Cedar St. “We’re waiting for the police to tell us what they’re investigating. So we’re all kind of on the hinge of what’s going on, but it doesn’t feel like a safe downtown lately.”
Among his frustrations is the widely held belief that the city has the power to do something.
“I can only go to the Minister of Justice and say ‘put these guys behind bars and leave them there.’ This catch-and-release that keeps happening is just destroying our downtown and I need the upper levels, the province and the federal government to hear us and fix these problems and put the repeat offenders behind bars.”
Robin says that between the BIA and the police, initiatives put into place have actually reduced the incidence of downtown crime over the past year.
Here is our entire interview:
