The city’s mayor says it’s time for the local police force to step up enforcement when it comes to convenience store robberies.
In the wake of four Mac’s Convenience Store robberies in the past three days, mayor Keith Hobbs said he’ll be speaking with Thunder Bay Police Service chief J.P. Levesque Tuesday afternoon about ways to increase enforcement. Hobbs also met with Mac’s officials in Thunder Bay last week to discuss the issue.
“I’m obviously not very happy,” Hobbs said of the robberies. “There’s a sense of frustration. I’m really going to push (Levesque) to start attacking this as a number one priority.”
The court system also needs to start taking these crimes seriously. While the city is working on long term solutions, Hobbs said punishment must take over in the mean time.
Deputy chief Andy Hay said with OxyContin being discontinued in the country, that is going to drive up price and demand for the drug, which may lead to an increase in robberies and property crimes.
Mac's robberies at a glance (story continues below)
Date Location Weapon
Jan. 21 Waterloo Street Knife
Feb. 19 Syndicate Avenue Knife
Feb. 20 Beverly Street Knife
March 2 James Street --
March 11 May Street Syringe
March 11 Simpson Street Syringe
March 12 May Street Syringe
March 13 North Edward Street Knife
Most robberies at places like Mac’s are because of people needing money to feed their addictions he said.
“With that comes the price and demand increase by people that are addicted to the drug.”
But Hobbs said it’s time for police to take action.
“The message is going to get to these criminals that their behaviour is not welcome and you can’t keep using drugs as an excuse … I mean it’s a cause, but it’s not an excuse to pull armed robberies in this city and terrorize people,” he said.
Chief Levesque said the police knew that robberies were going to escalate with the removal of OxyContin and have been stepping up enforcement.
“Crimes of this nature it’s pretty obvious that they’re a priority to us our number one priority right now,” he said.
There are project plans in place but Levesque didn’t want to specify what those plans were other than to say that officers would continue to patrol areas where Mac’s stores are.
“As far as the specifics of the project plan we’re certainly not going to put that out there right now we’ll see the effectiveness of it,” Levesque said.
““We’re here to help prevent crime. We do a really good job at solving crime. Preventing these is difficult. We would hope that Mac’s would do more when it comes to the prevention side of this and we will continue to work with them.”
Hobbs said crime is not a new issue in the city, pointing to former police chief Gerry Ouellette calling Thunder Bay “Dodge City” in 1984.
The mayor didn’t want to discuss what policing techniques he’d like to see used to stop the robberies, but did say having police at the stores could be one way to prevent the crimes.
He also pointed to Plexiglass protected employees and drive-up windows that stores in other cities have although Mac’s officials said they would rather not go that way.
“But it may come to that,” Hobbs said. “We don’t know what the fix is going to be.”
Mac’s announced Tuesday that they will be using social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, to get the public to help catch suspects. Images captured from the stores’ security cameras will be published on those sites along with a description of suspects.
Mac’s manager of security and loss prevention for Central Canada Sean Sportun said the company is going to launch the initiative province-wide but wanted to start with Thunder Bay due to the recent robberies.
People need to know that they can call Crime Stoppers and remain anonymous, he said.
“With any crime there are members in the community that either hear things or know things that don’t know what to do with the information,” he said.
Mac’s will cover up to $200 for Crime Stoppers rewards for information that leads to an arrest.
