A cry for action on filth and crime in Duncan
In support of an article from July 1, on page A9 “Business owner frustrated with ongoing crime”, I want to say that the crime is not only ongoing in Duncan, but also rising, as well as the filth on the streets of Lewis, York and the Trans-Canada Highway.
As a tenant of an apartment building on Lewis Street, where the Warmland Centre is located, we have suffered from the same crime as Adib Atrichi, whom we’ve known personally for almost a decade.
The street people broke into our car by breaking a rear window two years ago; my husband’s office is located on York Road (previously a Christian Book Store), and they broke a window, damaged doors, vandalized the mailbox, stole garbage bins, and every single day they park there to use drugs and leave unimaginable filth behind them.
As a parent of a three-year-old girl, we walk a lot to and from my husband’s office. It is disgusting to even walk on Lewis Street and York Road! Nobody cleans the sidewalks there, street people are there, sleeping, eating, urinating right in front of us on the sidewalk, needles from drug use are there in abundance, even piles of feces in the middle of the sidewalk, and their garbage is everywhere and a lot! Come and see! Walk on Lewis Street and York Road! Take pictures!
It is not a safe environment for kids and adults on those streets. What do our children see? Filth? Drugs? Poop and pissing persons on the street? Piles of garbage? Their foul language and their screams day and night? Is that what they will remember from their childhood?
It is simply disgusting and scary even for me to witness that.
My husband called multiple times to law enforcement; they come, shoo the street people away from our building and that is it! Police and government and law enforcement are useless! Nobody imprisons street persons for their crimes, nobody institutionalizes them for their drug abuse or their mental sickness; it’s just as Manseau said in the article from July 1: “That’s not the way the legal system works.” Well hello, it’s not working at all! Do something that works, it is your (RCMP, law enforcement, government, Island Health) job after all, not mine.
Just a cry for action!
Olga Blouin
Duncan