DRYDEN – After receiving a detailed incident report from the Ontario Provincial Police last December, the Dryden city council decided to close the pedestrian overpass between the hours of 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. out of concern for public safety.
Every three months, incident reports were provided to the council by Public Works Blake Poole and CAO Roger Nesbitt and currently, crime is down.
One of the reasons for the downward trend of incidents could be because of the weather said Poole. Another could also be the added police patrols in the area when city workers are there to clean up the facility.
In an incident report issued to the council in March and in April, the report noted that there were several reports of public intoxication spanning between Feb. 24 and Apr. 1.
The police were called for each incident and staff filed a Health and Safety Near Miss report for each of those days.
It was then that city staff had installed automatic locks on the overpass doors.
However, the time had to be adjusted by 15 minutes to accommodate requests from residents who use the overpass at approximately 6 a.m.
Since then, a focused OPP patrol has been put in place for the pedestrian overpass with the following information:
- Patrols will be assigned and conducted daily throughout both day and night shifts.
- Priority calls for service pending, 1715 and 1815 will be mandatory patrol times, amended if needed.
- All notable actions will be captured in a summary report and referenced to calls for service or enforcement action.
- Statistical analysis on focused patrol action will be reviewed and provided if necessary.
“In terms of if we were to go ahead and do this, from my perspective I would like to see a report in a month or two to see what is transpiring in whether we are seeing any difference in the level of vandalism or increases in crime or in anything of that nature or any safety concerns in going through there,” commented counc. Norm Bush.
Bush further notes that a report would help inform the council on if opening the overpass full time would recreate the problem.
“We are monitoring the incidents very closely, so that won’t be a problem to bring that report back,” said Nesbitt. “I would also approach the OPP to get the number of incidents that they had leading up to the reopening it 24 by 7, so we can compare that as well.”
As per the request to reopen the pedestrian overpass over the summer months, the motion was carried out.
