Mayor raises sex-trade sweep concerns
St. Catharines Mayor Walter Sendzik says he met with the chief of police after receiving multiple complaints about a recent undercover sweep aimed at the sex trade.
“A lot of individuals wrote into my office, called my office, there were Facebook posts,” Sendzik said during his monthly online chat at The Standard Thursday. The full chat can be viewed at www.stcatharinesstandard.ca.
“(They asked) how did this line up with the compassionate city and what is this doing to help those women who are struggling and caught in a vicious cycle and maybe using the trade of sex to supplant funds for an addiction or mental health issues?’”
Niagara Regional Police arrested seven women during Operation Red Light on July 18. The undercover sweep was aimed at the street-level sex trade in the Queenston Street area.
Sendzik said it appeared to be heavy-handed and there were issues associated with how it was covered. There weren’t as many men, or “johns” arrested as women.
He said he learned a lot after meeting with Niagara Regional Police Chief Jeff McGuire to get a better understanding of the police approach.
“We wanted to make sure that this wasn’t about marginalizing women,” Sendzik said of the meeting. “This is about making sure that the supports are there, that we’re working with the service agencies in the Queenston Street area, working with the NRP to make sure that we’re not just trying to put a bandaid on the issue, we’re actually getting to the root causes.”
Sendzik said one interesting aspect of the sweep was that the women who were arrested weren’t put into jail but into a diversion program, involving Niagara Public Health and others. He said it was an opportunity for those women who were arrested to get supports.
Sendzik had met with community agencies, businesses and residents prior to the sweep to discuss challenges in the Queenston Street area. He said they all agreed that they have to look at the problems from different angles and solutions.
Residents and businesses in the area have lived through sweeps before.
“I think the people in the community want to see the cycles broken, not pushed aside,” Sendzik said.
To critics who say the city is trying to gentrify the area, Sendzik said the city isn’t trying to marginalize people or push them to the edges.
“That’s not what this is about,” he said. “We just don’t want to leave anybody behind. So there’s no reason why in lifting up Queenston Street, we can’t lift everybody up at the same time.”
He said he’s heard the NRP is talking with members of diversion programs and is committed to working with them moving forward.
“The public sees what happened and then there’s so many moving parts behind it, and it’s the moving parts behind it that become really critical at this point in time so that we don’t lose the momentum of the urgency to help those who are needing it the most,” he said.
“I think there’s a lot of positive outcomes that will result from this and it’s an opportunity for everyone to have learned from it.”
Sendzik discussed several issues during Chat with the Mayor, including The Tragically Hip livestreamed concert coming up, panhandling at highway ramps and south-end neighbourhood concerns about student housing.
The next online Chat with the Mayor is in August and readers are encouraged to submit questions ahead of time on Twitter with the hashtag #Ask Sendzik, on The Standard’s Facebook page or by emailing them to kwalter@postmedia.com