After a special public meeting on safety downtown, the Kenora OPP detachment says they're committed to making changes to front line patrol and rolling it out as soon as possible.
Comments from some business owners have been critical of police response times.
Jason Canfield, a community service officer for the Kenora OPP, said presence seems to be the biggest thing.
“We're just going try and continue to up our foot patrols and our presence in the downtown core,” he said, adding the OPP had already planned on putting an office in the downtown core.
“We're just sort of waiting for the construction to be done,” he said adding there isn't a firm opening date, but it should be ready within months.
Canfield said the detachment commander will see what is feasible in order to work with the city to make some plans to try and curb the thefts, violence, and other incidents.
"We definitely have a lot of stuff that's going on, [there's also] a new kind of pilot project justice system going in. So there will be kind of a pop up court," Canfield said. "Maybe that will help kind of get people in into treatments and stuff and get them out from the justice system from committing these crimes to, you know due to being on alcohol or or drugs."
He said he was shocked to watch the videos of the incident at Island Girl boutique.
“[It] definitely looked very violent. Yeah, there's no excuse for anything like that to happen to anybody.
But he stressed the OPP’s priority is to keep everyone safe.
“It is tough right, because we're going to regular spots trying to make sure no one's doing the break and enters or the thefts, but then we're also trying to drive around and make sure everyone's safe and no one is going to freeze to death or overdose,” he said. “Thankfully lots of people recognize when they see something that's kind of out of place and they do call us.”
“Obviously we're definitely concerned with this weather,” he said. “It's warmer now but we had some -20, -30 [degree weather] we're concerned about, you know, people out on the streets freezing, so we're trying to get them up to our detox system or to the homeless shelter.”
He said policing has definitely changed over the years so we're working to help a lot of people out.
“I've definitely arrested people with the plan to charge them and after talking to them realizing that maybe they're just struggling with you know substance abuse stuff. We've got them into help instead and that seemed to work.”
Canfield said he hopes with the upcoming completion of a couple of housing projects will also help.
“Just having that housing is a big thing,” he said. “A place to call your own definitely good for people's mental health obviously and a lot of those I think are set up so they there is workers on site so that they can actually help connect people.”
Having grown up in Kenora, Canfield recognizes the community is pretty heated right now, but said the community needs to get together and realize everyone is shooting for the same goal.
“All the people that work at the shops, live downtown and stuff, they're all people I've grown up with. Lots of them are friends, family so we all want the city to be safe and I hope that everyone can kind of get together and talk,” he said. “A lot of the people I chat with, whether they're homeless, alcoholics, drug users, majority of them are decent people. They're just struggling.”
“I know a lot of them by name. They know me. We laugh. We chat.”
