Increased patrolling won’t reduce crime in London Road area

Editor,

I am writing in response to “London Road residents fed up with rising crime” by Dale Woodard.

The London Road Association felt there were positive or partial solutions to rising crime rates, as quantified by posts on Facebook, which includes such things as supposedly “suspicious persons.”

I hope that everyone has enough sense to see how problematic that is.

The police exist to enforce a class-stratified society.

This is their raison-d’être. This is why property crime is punished more severely than interpersonal violence.

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread.” Anatole France

I am writing to inform your readership that increased police patrolling in the London Road neighbourhood would not reduce crime.

A positive solution to the (purported) rise in crime is for the people of the London Road neighbourhood to: turn on our lights at night, lock our doors at night, get to know our neighbours from a safe two-metre distance, get outside, and go for walks.

An active community that is alive and present in the street, and that is really physically there for each other, will deter crime more than our police can.

Lethbridge is a city where our police are very well known to abuse their powers, and they target people that they don’t like.

Many of us have seen uniformed police patrols harass legitimate citizens of Lethbridge, who are people that should be here, and have every right to be here. Volunteer/ police enforcement is known to disproportionately target minorities.

Even after adjusting for drug use patterns and other risk factors associated with incarceration, a study by Barker et al. (2015) found that indigenous street-involved youth were still significantly more likely to be incarcerated than their non-indigenous peers.

This injustice is of such a magnitude that it is an embarrassment to Canada on the world stage.

In any case, a reputable police force would not want volunteer thugs harassing people on the street.

We should have kept the safe injection site open, and the city should consider opening a free restaurant to provide for the desperately poor people in the downtown, or set aside an hour of the evening when some restaurants could provide food for free.

Dr. Timothy Schwinghamer and Lane Anderson