Downtown core suffering from drug usage
Library and property owners have all seen impact
While the supervised consumption site has moved a portion of the public drug use out of the immediate city core, other areas of downtown have suffered and continue to suffer from it.
Last fall, then-owner of the Galt Manor apartment complex located on 7 Street South Doug Cutler shared his story about how drug dealers and users had run down his building to the point it was eventually condemned when he could no longer afford to make payments on it.
The property had previously been highlighted at Lethbridge Police Commission meetings for experiencing increased and significant drug activity in an area heavily frequented by addicts, in the blocks just west of the public library.
Drug dealers had moved into the property, and with them came a horde of drug users who continually broke into the building, committed property crime on other tenants, eventually scaring them off, and leaving empty units which immediately led to vagrancy problems.
By the time the building was condemned, Cutler was spending every day at the property, acting as his own security, continually making repairs, cleaning up needle debris, and removing stolen bikes and other items from the property.
While Cutler was aware of drugs being dealt in the building, there was little he could do about it.
In the months leading up to the building being condemned, a raid on one of the units by the City’s K-9 and Downtown Policing Unit netted about $5,000 worth of methamphetamine.
Following that raid, inspectors handed Cutler a laundry list of repairs he needed to make on the property. But previous repairs had eaten away his retirement savings, and the building was condemned.
In February of this year, another landowner in that area came forward to the Lethbridge Police Commission to speak about similar issues.
“The future for downtown Lethbridge is grim if this continues,” Mike Vercillo told the Commission.
He said the experience of owning property in the core has been getting “exponentially worse” in recent years.
In the past five years, he had experienced increasing issues involving vagrancy, trespassing, and drug use, to the point where he was undertaking personal risk when dealing with drug users.
“I’ve had to build fences, replace windows, clean vomit, excrement, urine – you name it, it’s been there,” he told the Commission.
The downtown branch of the Lethbridge Public Library has dealt with substantial levels of drug-related crime, compounded by the fact the facility is designed to be an open and welcoming space for all.
Access to washrooms, open wireless internet, and simply being a warm place on cold days all serve to attract people who use the library for inappropriate purposes.
There have been disturbances such as drug sales and overdoses.
The amount of activity has brought the library together with the Lethbridge Police Service through its Downtown Policing Unit.
The library has also taken measures such as the installation of safe disposal containers for needles.
Because the library has exterior lights, drug users congregate to use drugs and then were use of the free wireless internet which the library provides as a service.
Initially under pressure from police to shut down open internet access, the two groups found a compromise that saw library continue to provide free and open access to the internet for all, but only during hours of operation.
The library has posted signs warning users that people are welcome in the facility but drugs are not. Offenders could be asked to leave or banned outright, depending on the severity of their behaviour.
Following the opening of the supervised consumption site, there has been a marked improvement in regards to illicit drug activity.
“(Last year) was nothing if not a year of challenges for the downtown library,” Lethbridge Public Library CEO Terra Plato told City Council in May.
“The state of the community is reflected in its public spaces, and, at its core, the public library is a public space for everyone. I
t’s often the first to reflect what is going on in the community.”
Safety upgrades to the facility included adding a second security guard during open hours, a number of building upgrades made during renovations, and adapting washrooms to be barrier-free.
Plato said 2017 was significant for the library because it, like Lethbridge itself, was transitioning away from small city issues and beginning to deal more with issues seen in larger centres.
“We’re seeing ourselves act more like a big city library than a small town library – as I’m sure many organizations in the city are experiencing,” she said at the time.
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