By Spencer Sterritt

Downtown Nanaimo fights to keep community policing office open

Feb 1, 2018 | 6:34 PM

NANAIMO — Recommended for closure, the doors may stay open at Nanaimo’s community policing and services office.

At the City’s public safety committee meeting on Thursday, Feb. 1, committee members passed a motion recommending the office stay open and be resourced to address other street issues.

Karen Fry, fire chief and acting director of public safety, said the building on Victoria Cres. could fill a larger role in the community and isn’t being utilized as well as it could be.

“I don’t think necessarily having bylaw staff in there with a locked door is the best resource,” she said to the committee and a sizable crowd at the meeting. “Really…it’s only a block away for staff to get down there and bylaw officers themselves are out on the street, they’re not stationed there.”

She said the office space would be better used for community outreach, such as having warming beds, mental health workers or social workers from Nanaimo’s various agencies. 

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It was also suggested the office could house the newly announced community response team which is hoped will make progress in combating Nanaimo’s current overdose crisis.

The Core Services Review, which made many recommendations about city facilities and services, said the services offered at the community policing office would be better suited in the city service and resource centre on Dunsmuir St.

Downtown business owners spoke passionately in favour of keeping the office open in some capacity.

“I think by shutting it down, it’s not going to be much help for what’s a very huge problem we have here in Nanaimo,” That 50’s Barbershop owner Dave Lawrence said.

Kevan Shaw, president of the Victoria Cres. Association, said closing the office without replacing it or adding new resources was “nuts.”

“We need more enforcement, more outreach to get those people who can’t obviously care for themselves into care. Or set up some institutions. Or throw them behind bars. We have to protect the good people out here.”

The recommendation, which also included City of Nanaimo staff identifying ways to repurpose the space, will now go to City Council for final approval.

spencer@nanaimonewsnow.com

On Twitter: @spencer_sterrit