Westside shop owner fed up with thievery
Business owner whose shop was hit 3 times in 3 weeks says crime in West Kelowna ‘rampant’
Crime in West Kelowna is “rampant,” says one local business owner who has been targeted by thieves several times during the past couple of months.
“We got robbed three times in three weeks,” said Patricia Guest, owner of L’Oven Farm Fresh Food on Main Street.
Guest has been in business in West Kelowna for two years, and she has never had a problem with theft until recently, she said.
“It’s rampant,” she said of local crime. “It’s not just me. It’s everybody over here.”
Surveillance video showed a thief going through the L’Oven cooler in a fenced compound out back for 2 1/2 hours, said Guest.
“The first time, they took 400 pounds of food — all my prepped food, my sausages, my hamburgers, my organic prime rib steaks,” she said. “That hurts a lot, not only from a labour point of view, but from a food-cost point of view.”
Each theft cost her about $2,000, she said.
“We couldn’t stop him physically; we had locks and everything on it, so I just appealed to his humanity,” said Guest. “I put a note on the cooler that said ‘if you don’t stop robbing me you’ll put me out of business and ruin my dream and put 14 people out of work.’”
Guest said she hasn’t been robbed since, but she remains on edge.
Main Street is a “tough place to do business,” said West Kelowna Mayor Doug Findlater.
“It’s an area we struggle with,” he said. “Over time, the business district has deteriorated a bit. There’s still people doing good business there, and we’re glad they’re hanging in.”
Findlater said the Westbank transit exchange has brought undesirable activity to that area.
“That’s why we have as much patrol there as we can afford,” he said. “We’ve asked the RCMP to patrol, we’ve put resources into commissionaires to patrol the bus exchange and the other bus stops in that area, and in the summer there are bylaw patrols. Those are our responses, and we’d love to hear suggestions.”
Property crimes are on the rise in West Kelowna, said Cpl. Jesse O’Donaghey of the Kelowna RCMP.
Between Jan. 1 and Oct. 25 this year, police generated 1,019 files relating to property crime in West Kelowna compared to 821 files in the same period last year. That’s an increase of 24 per cent.
The number of violent assaults has remained steady, with 162 such offences in West Kelowna reported to police so far this year compared to 165 reports during the same time last year.
“RCMP continue to proactively target prolific offenders and those known to commit crime in the community,” said O’Donaghey. “Volunteers of the West Kelowna RCMP citizens on patrol remain dedicated to being extra sets of eyes and ears for their local Mounties, while patrolling areas identified by crime analysts as crime hot spots.”
If people notice suspicious activity, they are encouraged to report it to police.