Third annual crime prevention award nomination process underway

Mayor Keith Hobbs said crime prevention in Thunder Bay is all about taking back the city one neighbourhood at a time.

It can be infectious, said the former police officer on Thursday, launching the city’s third annual community safety award nominations.
While the mayor is the first to admit there is still too much crime in the city, it’s getting better, he said.

“We are making gains. If you look at the crime severity index it’s coming down and that’s because we are looking at drug strategy, the alcohol management program all those programs that we didn’t really pay enough attention to,” he said.

“With these crime prevention awards, we’ve seen some big winners.”

Hobbs pointed to the Evergreen: A United Neighbourhood and the success the program, a past winner, has had making the area safer for residents and visitors.

It’s a shining example of the type of efforts the awards program, sponsored by Union Gas and the City of Thunder Bay, were designed to recognize.

“Just the fact they took an organized crime, biker clubhouse and have turned it into a community place where kids can go and feel safe and they do a lot of work in the neighbourhood and walkabouts at night time. Crime rates in that area have come down because of that initiative,” Hobbs said.

“There’s the Picton/Blucher area as well, another good neighbourhood project that’s shown good success.”

The awards are broken down into several categories, including the community hero award for an outstanding individual effort and the young leader award which is given to a child or youth demonstrating and encouraging active participation in community safety or crime prevention.

There’s also the outstanding community project award, for outstanding results in community safety or crime prevention and collaboration. A total of four awards can be handed out in this category.

Tom Walters, chairman of the city’s crime prevention council said it takes a whole city to stop crime from happening.

“We know that when people are making efforts to make neighbourhoods strong and families strong and to really address some of the root causes of crime, that in the long term we’re going to see reduction. As the crime prevention council we think it’s extremely important to recognize the work of people who are out there doing things that in some cases people may not realize how important they are,” Walters said, cautioning it will take time for tangible drops in overall crime rates to happen. 

“We want to bring attention to that and bring attention to the fact that anybody can really be working on preventing crime.”

Nominations forms are available at city hall and close on Sept. 27. Recipients will be honoured at the Nov. 4 city council meeting.