Quesnel Mayor Addresses Panhandling Issue
Quesnel, B.C. – Quesnel Mayor Mary Sjostrom says if re-elected she’ll form a mayor’s task force on community safety to deal with aggressive panhandlers.
She was responding to a press release sent out by the Quesnel RCMP earlier this week which highlighted the right’s of citizens under the Safe Streets Act when it comes to aggressive panhandling.
Quesnel Mayor Mary Sjostrom
Sjostrom admits the issue started to really rear its head this past summer.
“I think in the summertime the merchants felt that it was becoming quite an issue,” adding it’s become “progressively worse.”
She says the city simply doesn’t have the money to hire more police officers to deal with the issue and hopes they can find “that middle ground where we can work together” in finding a solution to the problem.
Sjostrom says a solution is needed to ensure merchants and residents feel safe – not to mention visitors.
“Then we have our visitors with Rocky Mountain vacations – I just do not want people to not feel safe.”
Asked why it’s become an issue, Sjostrom couldn’t put her finger on the exact reason but says their shelter is very close to the downtown core.
“I hate to blame it on that because I don’t know. It certainly has brought some of those individuals maybe closer to the downtown core than what they were but you know I don’t have the answer.”
However she says it’s certainly something she’s determined to get to the bottom of “before it goes too far.”
Comments
Mary; Do not send your pan handlers to Prince George, we have our own problems. The bleeding hearts club would not agree with me but God helps those that help them selves and the world does not owe anyone a living.
She hit the nail on the head, the shelter is too close to the core and that’s what fuels the issue. Businesses need to be proactive by grabbing the phone and calling in complaints, citizens need to also become proactive and start photographing or video recording these occurrences. Turning this information over to the RCMP will assure these pan handlers will get a day in court as well as being jacked up by the police. There is an acceptable code of conduct in a community and these urchins need to learn the hard way.
Political correctness needs to go out the window with most of these individuals. Jack them up enough and they will do one of two things, get tired of being jacked up and behave or move on to some other place. Once a history is formed with the police, they won’t be able to carry on the behavior.
“She hit the nail on the head, the shelter is too close to the core”
And that’s exactly what the citizens were saying when that shelter was proposed. As usual, the politicians knew best (and that includes Mary, who was a councillor at the time and, if memory serves, voted to approve its location).
Now the crackheads are out of the barn and there’s addicts and drunks wandering all over town. Property crimes and violence are through the roof and her solution is a “task force”. She seems to be more worried about the appearance of the town to the wealthy tourists that get off the train to spend ONE NIGHT here while those of us that live here can’t buy groceries without being accosted.
I guess if I was the mayor I’d be embarrassed too.
Funny that we can’t afford more policing but she was ready to saddle us with an arena/multicentre/vanity project that would have cost us a pile in perpetuity.
Good riddance, Mary, though I’m not holding out much hope for better leadership from political chameleon Enviro-Bob. Can’t be any worse, I suppose…
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