Times & Transcript StaffNovember 21, 2006
Moncton's Public Safety Advisory Committee is going back to the people to gauge residents' concerns about crime and safety issues in their neighbourhoods.
"It's been 10 years since the original report came out and we thought it was a good time to come back to the people," PSAC co-ordinator Robert Gallant says.
The committee was formed after two murders and a spate of violent incidents in Moncton in the fall of 1996.
The committee's mission is to empower citizens to pinpoint problems, uncover the root cause of the problems and take action to fix those problems.
Like the committee's first efforts of a decade ago, this new project is broad-based and wide-ranging.
If you have a crime issue in your neighbourhood, the committee wants to hear about it.
"We don't want to tell people 'These are the problems,'" Gallant says.
"We want to hear what people's issues are. And that means anything."
Since the committee's 1997 report, the group has been implementing solutions, raising awareness of problems and helping community groups to do the same, including some ideas that were granted municipal funding.
Moncton is a growing city, however, and safety concerns change with that growth - and over time as well.
The forum will be held Wednesday at the Lions' Senior Citizens' Centre at 473 St. George St., from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
You can also let them know of your concerns by completing their on-line survey at http://www.moncton.ca/publicsafety/
The end result will be a report similar to the 1997 document which guided the committee's actions over the past decade and resulted in campaigns against family violence, neighbourhood prostitution and bullying,
to name just such three examples.
The new report, like the last one, will identify both perceived and actual problems and different solutions for addressing them. After that, the identified solutions will be put into action in short order.
"It's not always a policing problem," Gallant notes.
The committee's 19 members come from diverse backgrounds: police, the parole board, schools, the media, social workers, victims' rights defenders and the like.
"Emphasis is given to initiatives that empower individuals or groups to take positive actions that will address the root causes of crime and promote social development," the committee's mandate says.
"We stimulate partnerships that focus on making things happen. We promote specific action projects at the committee and sub-committee level. A broad based education/sensitization/communications plan will be carried out.
"Information sessions, focus groups, public service announcements, direct contact with service clubs, corporations, churches, social service agencies, and various levels of government.
"The strategy will provide information aimed at mobilizing these groups to assist their communities to develop long-term safer-community strategies."
Good post, Paladin. I filled out the survey.
Cheers dude!
Thanks ,,
Also copy , paste and send this to all you know in our area. If everyone fills out the survey, things just might inprove a little. If we all do nothing,,,then for sure, nothing will happen.
2006/11/23
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Safety panel hears crime concerns Community urged to take back neighbourhoods, work together with authorities
November 23, 2006
About two dozen people gathered at the Lions Senior Citizens Centre on St. George Street last night to talk about public safety in Moncton. Along the way, they voiced their frustrations and celebrated their victories.
What brought them together was a public forum organized by the City of Moncton's Public Safety Advisory Committee. What united them was concern about crimes great and small occurring in their neighbourhoods.
Marc Maurice was just one of the citizens who attended the meeting. The Church Street resident is a member of the 250-strong Halls Creek Neighbourhood Watch Association and delivered the ironic news that an exotic dance hall makes a better neighbour than the city's tradition-steeped and oldest place of learning.
Maurice said people would perhaps be surprised to hear that other than noise around closing time, the Night Magic strip club on Mountain Road at Church does not actually represent much of a problem for area residents. Rather, it is students from Moncton High School who are the greatest concern right now, as they leave their smoke-free school and cause all sorts of problems on surrounding streets each day.
"We don't believe the bar has increased crime in the area," Maurice said. "They are decent corporate citizens to a certain extent, keeping up their property and struggling to deal with the students too."
Maurice, on the other hand, accused the administration of Moncton High School of "turning a blind eye" to the trouble students were causing for area homes and businesses.
Maurice did, however, take advantage of the presence of District 2 director of education John White at the meeting to bring his concern a little further up the ladder.
Many of the speakers at the forum feared reprisals and therefore refused to give their names to reporters and asked that news cameras be turned off, making much of what was said difficult to report.
Among those who did go on record, though, was Lisa Marie Deveau, one of the founders of Residents Against Street Solicitation, a neighbourhood watch group in the St. George Street and Victoria Park area.
"The crime in a community is that community's problem," Deveau said. "When you really see change is when the community organizes and stands up. It makes it more uncomfortable and undesirable for those who would do criminal activities."
Deveau said her group's largely successful efforts to take back their neighbourhood came through neighbours getting to know each other, becoming a community, and working co-operatively with police and Moncton city council. The involvement of those two latter groups continued last night with councillors Brian Hicks and Doug Robertson taking part in the discussions, while Cpl. Pat Fox spoke for the RCMP.
Bob Clark, whose son Jeff was murdered in one of the crimes that spurred the creation of the Public Safety Advisory Committee in 1996, asked that since most crime seems to have its roots in illicit drug use, were their adequate resources to deal with addiction and adequate laws for police to confront the problem.
Committee member Annette Vautour-MacKay noted there are considerable waiting lists in the area for people who do actually want treatment for their addictions.
Brian Chase of the National Parole Board and Chantal Hebert of Corrections Canada were also on hand to address problems and misperceptions about ex-offenders in our community. They surprised practically everyone when they pointed out that contrary to popular belief, there are only two halfway houses for offenders in Moncton.
There are, however, a number of rooming houses and other private rental properties in Moncton that accept ex-offenders as tenants. And Brian Chase confirmed that Moncton has a higher than average number of former inmates in its population because it is the nearest major centre to three federal prisons - at Renous, Dorchester and Springhill.
He said that though Canada's parole system is frequently criticized, it is nevertheless far preferable to reintegrate offenders under tight controls than to leave them to serve their full sentences and then have them dumped back on the street with no safety nets whatsoever.
Public Safety Advisory chairman Robert Gallant summed up his committee's mission as "empowering citizens to pinpoint problems, uncover the root causes of the problems and take action to fix those problems," Bob Clark, speaking from his own bitter experience with crime, perhaps best summed up the theme of the whole gathering. "If we ignore it, rest assured it will get worse," he said.
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