Long-term solution

Anyone thinking crime will disappear with the arrival of the crime prevention committee is setting themselves up for disappointment, said the committee’s acting chairwoman.

Coun. Rebecca Johnson, who kicked off the  inaugural meeting of the 26-person committee, said while the committee will get to work immediately, starting with a crime audit, it could take up to a decade for significant results to be seen.

“This is not going to be a quick fix for this community,” Johnson said Thursday.

Johnson, who filled in for Coun. Iain Angus, called away on a family emergency, said the initial meeting was to be more about a getting-to-know-you process among the participants. The group includes law enforcement, city administration, social services, youth representatives and the self-described critic, Mayor Keith Hobbs.

Johnson, who said the committee could choose to add other community partners should it deem them necessary, acknowledged the city is late coming to the crime prevention table.

However, she added there are a number of strategies related to drug prevention and youth already in the works, so it’s not like the city has sat on its hands in recent years.

“I think they’ve always been there in various areas. Certainly we’ve had staff working on those strategies. Now it’s a case that the city itself has to step forward, facilitating and bringing those committees together that can work on this as a community,” Johnson said.

“I don’t know that there was lateness. It was the right time, sometimes you have to find the right time to do that.”

Hobbs, a former police officer and outspoken opponent of the status quo of law enforcement practices in Thunder Bay, said he arrives at the table with solutions in hand and welcomes the committee wholeheartedly.

A year ago Hobbs criticized police chief Bob Herman, and spent the entire election campaign boasting about his plan to reorganize the police department to more effectively fight crime.
 
Hobbs, the former police association president, said officers just can’t keep up with the mounting workload.

“That’s why it’s so important to bring the community together, to help not only the police out, but to help the youth out,” Hobbs said. “I think it’s going to be a committee like this that helps us to resolve, not all the problems, you’re always going to have crime issues, but we can knock those down and have quantitative and qualitative measures to reduce crime in Thunder Bay.”

Amy Siciliano, the newly hired crime prevention committee co-ordinator, said Thursday’s meeting was geared toward setting the basis for the much-anticipated crime and disorder audit.

The audit is the first step in tackling the root causes behind crime, and will detail not only the types of crime occurring and locations, but find out how worried the populace is about it and what solutions they want to see put in place.

She knows the expectations placed on the committee are high.

“I think there’s a perception, and it’s not just Thunder Bay, but really across Canada, that crime is escalating. And so I think expectations in this community are maybe aligned across communities,” she said. “The importance of doing the diagnosis is to say what really is going on out there? What is the evidence?

“For example, we do know that over the long term, crime rates in Thunder Bay are declining. But there are certain issues that aren’t. So we’re seeing a fluctuation and until we get in and look at the data and talk to people, we don’t know what’s going on for sure.”

From a police perspective, deputy chief J.P. Levesque said he welcomes any help fighting crime.

He sees the committee helping most reducing the social problems that eventually lead to criminal activity. The two sides should work well together, he said.

“Then we can focus more on policing issues if those social issues are looked at in another format,” Levesque said.

The crime prevention committee is scheduled to meet bi-monthly, with the next meeting slated for late January. On Thursday Wendy Landry of the Thunder Bay Council of the Metis Nation was elected board chairwoman, while John DeFaveri was chosen vice-chairman.