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Unless you live in our downtown, you’ve probably become desensitized to reports of stabbings, shootings, beatings, drug dens, prostitution, and fires in vacant buildings .

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If you don’t experience it, you don’t see it, and if you don’t see it, you might not think about it unless you hear a news report about the latest horrific event in that part of Winnipeg that most of Winnipeggers don’t want it. be.

For years, Sel Burrows has advocated for the Point Douglas area and continues to speak on behalf of the residents of our downtown. He denounces “community centers without programs, drug dealers without a drug information line and police patrolling Linden Woods while there are 300 outstanding arrest warrants in the city center.”

This does not mean that there is no hope. Burrows highlights some of the strategies he and others employed to help solve the problems at Point Douglas that were both cost-effective and just plain effective. He says drunks and drug dealers have been chased out of Joe Zukin Park with minimal effort by police to make the park safe again.

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Burrows believes that with three successive conservative mayors (at least nominally) there is little interest in 510 Main Street to address some of downtown’s ills.

Mayor Scott Gillingham disagrees. He maintains that the city administration and the city council care very much about our downtown and its downtown. He is also convinced that residents of surrounding neighborhoods are not blind to the plight of those less wealthy, saying that “most Winnipeggers are compassionate.”

But there is something destructive about letting the rot continue as if it doesn’t exist. We all lose a part of ourselves when our fellow citizens suffer.

Inner city residents who live under the repressive regime of drug dealers and gangs are indeed our fellow citizens. They deserve more than another report from an ineffective social service agency telling us everything we already know.

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None of this is a newsletter. These problems are not unique to Winnipeg either. All North American cities are facing similar crises. You know it, whether you see it firsthand or not. We are often reminded that poverty is the main cause, but that is an oversimplification and an insult to the overwhelming majority of low-income people who live honest lives. They’re just trying to get along, make ends meet, and raise decent children in dire conditions.

Although Gillingham recognizes there is still much to do, small progress has been made in reducing the number of vacant properties. The community safety team aboard the buses helped and the Downtown Community Safety Partnership reduced its reliance on fire, paramedic and police resources. It would be unfair to pretend that no effort is being made.

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But tinkering and half-measures won’t solve the problem. It’s time for Winnipeg to get serious about ridding itself of the cancer of drug dealers and gangs that are ravaging our city and preying on our youth, especially newcomers who are particularly vulnerable to the lure of gang life.

If we really want to show that we are committed to bringing health to inner cities, we must allow the surgeons, the people dressed in blue, to eliminate cancer. We have a choice. We can wring our hands at the next report telling us that crime is a problem in our downtown, or we can send in law enforcement to do the things that need to be done. Our fellow citizens are waiting for our response.

— Geoff Currier is a former Winnipeg broadcaster.

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