What does DTK need?

[danbrotherston]

If you think all the crime is downtown I have some news for you. Take a look at the WRPS GIS map, and filter on thefts, or assaults, for example (homicides are thankfully rare enough that the map does not provide meaningful data):
https://gismaps.policereporting.ca/verti...b0a72804d2

And I should note that addicts are found in the suburbs, too, although often inside their own homes.

I don't think anyone thinks all crime happens in one place, and none happens elsewhere. A difference in rates can provide a meaningful difference in quality of life and perception of safety, however. I also have no trust in the validity of the data from WRPS for the purpose of this argument. Certain events that are prevalent downtown, like harassment and uttering threats, will basically never appear in this data. Both the public and the police as far as I can tell have no expectation of decency or positive outcomes of dealing with a certain segment of the population found downtown, and simply don't bother with the processes that will result in occurrences showing up in the dataset. I've called the police for things that you or I would be charged for only to be asked "what do you want us to do about that?", effectively ending the interaction there.

The labeling of crimes can also be unhelpful here; one of the more recent times I had to call in was for a man who was throwing bricks at my building, the neighbouring building, and a business vehicle (which had just opened opened downtown two days prior...) while shouting racial slurs that I certainly won't be repeating here. He continued in his rage for about 20 minutes until the police showed up and simply asked him to leave. This was recorded as "Unwanted person", which doesn't capture the nuances including property damage and whatever harm the racial slurs might cause someone.

Whether these are actually unsafe situations or not, the general environment of stress and paranoia is one I certainly would never consider subjecting a child to. I was raised in various non-urban environments and I know life doesn't have to be like this.

Anyways, to Kodra's original complaints, I wonder if there is something particularly bad in the drug supply at the moment. My FIL was visiting this weekend and in the few blocks between Weber/Victoria to King/Ontario we had 3 separate (seemingly drug addicted) people step out in front of the car, one of which actively blocked us while screaming. In those same few blocks we also saw police dealing with 3 different situations. Not a good impression for sometime visiting the area. That same night I had to make a few trips between downtown and GRH on foot and LRT, and the vibe was really not good.

I don't think this is biased as you think. I've on more than one occasion been verbally, explicitly threatened by people who are not homeless or otherwise destitute (you can tell because they were often driving their families in nice vehicles, dressed in nice clothing), and the police also do not care. People are people, and people are often shitty, and even when they aren't shitty all the time, they will often act shitty anyway.

But in any case, I do understand that downtown seems to have become rougher in the time since I left. It is rather unfortunate, because before I left, people in my family believed downtown was problematic as you describe (I am assuming the experiences you describe are daily, routine, whatever, and not an exceptional thing that occurs once a year), and yet, was not. I had more drunk drivers crash into things around my home than I had interactions with homeless people in the 5 years we lived downtown. So yeah, when I worried about my daughter downtown, I worried about the drunk, aggressive, or distracted drivers, not the homeless people. If things have changed for the worse, that is unfortunate.