Close to 300 people crowded into a meeting room at Fredericton’s Crowne Plaza hotel on Tuesday to share what they say are growing concerns about crime, drug use and homelessness in the city’s downtown.
That’s more than twice the number of businesses owners and other stakeholders who attended a similar meeting last year, according to the City of Fredericton.
The meeting came on the heels of a recent fire that destroyed a long-standing sporting-goods store on Queen Street, MacTavish’s Source for Sports, which police say was set deliberately.
While Tuesday’s event wasn’t open to the media, many participants were eager to speak to reporters afterwards to expression their frustrations.
Adrian Butts owns various commercial buildings in the downtown area and says he has experienced problems such as break-ins and theft.
“Just on Friday, we had one of my commercial buildings [broken into], entered and burgled, with significant damage,” he said.
“One of my tenants went bankrupt because their clientele will no longer come downtown or come into the building because of an unsavoury element there. My truck was robbed two weeks ago,” Butts said.
Matt Savage, owner of Savage’s Bicycle Centre, said the recent fire at MacTavish’s was the final straw.
“We’re seeing issues of homelessness, mental health, addiction … it’s a downstream issue. So there’s larger issues at play here.
“But day-to-day, it’s difficult. Our staff are being assaulted … thank goodness our customers keep coming. But it’s a struggle daily.”
The city and local police hosted a meeting Tuesday to talk about issues relating to public safety in downtown Fredericton. Business owners and other stakeholders got a chance to share their concerns about what’s happening in their community.
Jenn Tuttle owns The Nest Yoga and Sequoia, a natural goods store. Both are located downtown. Tuttle said they’re having issues when it comes to safety, which has forced them to lock their doors on occasion.
“We’re experiencing people coming into the stores and harassing our staff and making them feel quite uncomfortable. We’re experiencing theft. We do have a lot of security measures in place. However, that doesn’t always deter people from stealing.”
Police Chief Gary Forward said the “sheer number of business owners, employees that came out was indicative of some of the frustration that I think the business community and residents are experiencing.”
In terms of policing, Forward said there’s a recruitment issue that should be addressed within the next year, through a satellite of the Atlantic Police Academy.
Forward said the pilot project will allow them to train 10 to 12 new officers.
By this time next year, he said they hope to have “the people that we need in place to go after a number of the proactive programs that we have, including the school resource officers or community liaison officers and even get back to an increased area of visibility through a beat patrol or full patrols or bike patrols.”
Mayor Kate Rogers said there was a lot of openness at the meeting and that she could “feel the concern, the frustration and the exasperation” in the room.
She said it was an opportunity for the city and police to share what they have been working on to address the problems.
This includes expanding the work of the community safety services unit, made up of uniformed security officers who patrol trails and other areas and the use of public safety cameras, Rogers said after the meeting.
She also said a new community safety task force will “bring community stakeholders together, a small group to put together a list of action items that we want movement on from other orders of government.” Recommendations are expected in the spring.
Meanwhile, business owners say they look forward to any improvements.
Tuttle “would love to see Fredericton downtown in particular be a place that we feel safe again. That’s what I would like to see.”
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