Petition opposes ambassadors

Musician urging Peterborough DBIA to scrap new downtown ambassadors program

A new online petition asking the Downtown BIA to abolish its new security guard program received more than 200 signatures in a bit more than 24 hours this week.

Local musician Nick Ferrio started the petition on a site for community petitions called Avaaz. org.

He said he’s concerned about how the Downtown BIA has hired three security guards to patrol the streets.

The guards – or ambassadors, as the DBIA calls them - will intervene whenever there’s a conflict

between panhandlers and downtown shoppers.

But they’re also expected to give directions and the downtown WiFi password to tourists and shoppers, and generally make the downtown more hospitable.

The pilot program started this week. The DBIA plans to evaluate it at the end of September to decide whether it’s worth continuing.

Ferrio said he doesn’t want to see the program continue at all. The petition calls for abolition.

“The DBIA is meant to advertise for businesses – not to build a task-force to confront anti-social behaviour,” Ferrio said. “Why is that their job?”

It’s the police’s job, Ferrio said, and he doesn’t think it’s within the DBIA’s purview to patrol the streets just the way a shopping mall is patrolled.

“I want to live in a community – not an outdoor mall,” Ferrio said.

The rationale for the petition is explained on the web page.

“The private policing of public space has no place in Peterborough,” it states. “The Downtown Ambassador Initiative will push poor people out of public spaces in the interests of downtown businesses, leading to intimidation, harassment and the criminalization of those facing mental illness, poverty, and homelessness.”

Terry Guiel, the executive director of the DBIA, said he was expecting some degree of controversy.

“This is not to target the marginalized – more to the point, panhandlers,” he said Wednesday. “I think there are people jumping to conclusions. I think people need to give the program a chance.”

Guiel says the DBIA receives phone calls and emails daily about the safety of downtown.

People don’t feel safe because

there are panhandlers and people struggling mental health crises on the sidewalks, he said.

He said he understands that the DBIA’s mandate isn’t to tackle social problems.

“I’ve plead with mental health experts, with social service agencies, with the police – constantly! – to do something proactive and non-punitive to give our businesses help,” he said.

But no one’s been able to solve the problem, he said – he thinks it just gets worse.

“The DBIA is stepping into a void,” he said. “We’re doing something we shouldn’t have to do – and we’re doing it in as proactive, peaceful, non-punitive way as possible .... We have to create a safe space downtown for everyone – including the marginalized.”

NOTE: To visit the online petition, see https://goo.gl/aERUi1.