Town-hall meeting to pursue crime prevention in west end
There are things you could be doing to make your property less prone to crime.
That’s one of the messages that will be pushed at a townhall meeting Tuesday morning about preventing crime in Windsor’s west end.
“It’s called CPTED — crime prevention through environmental design,” said Fabio Costante, a west Windsor activist and public school board trustee. “It’s a way to identify risks surrounding your property and how to mitigate those risks.”
Founder of the Our West End initiative, Costante will be joined by Windsor police representatives for a frank discussion on what more can be done to safeguard residences, businesses and public properties.
Barry Horrobin, director of planning and physical resources with Windsor police, will be on hand to provide basic advice on CPTED — which can range from strategic lighting, to physical fortifications, to trimming trees and hedges for improved sight lines.
“Sometimes people’s land- scaping is very beautiful — but it gets to the point where it blocks the view of the main entrance to the building and/ or the address number,” Horrobin said, by way of example.
“Those are things that are very much against natural surveillance that a property owner has complete control to change.”
Ward 2 Coun. John Elliott will also be attending. But Elliott emphasized the meeting shouldn’t be taken as any indication west Windsor is more prone to crime than other parts of the city.
“If you check the stats, you’ll find that’s not true,” Elliott said. “The west end always gets that rap. It’s a stigma from many years ago.”
Elliott believes that, rather than crime, the west side’s reputation should reflect its true qualities: deep historical value and strength through collaboration.
“This is a community like no other. This is the oldest historical area on this side of Montreal,” Elliott said.
“I don’t know that there’s a community in Windsor that works together more cohesive- ly than the west side. The agencies, the police, the schools — we’ve been in the same loop for years.”
Costante agreed. He suggested part of the perception problem could lie in how Windsor crime is reported by media: anything that happens west of Crawford Avenue is often described as taking place in the “west end” — generalizing a large geographic area with a wide variety of neighbourhoods.
“I don’t think it’s fair at all,” Costante said. “We’ve had a stigma for as long as I know and I don’t understand it.”
The Our West End town hall meeting on crime prevention takes place Tuesday from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Life After Fifty senior citizen centre, 635 McEwan Ave. Co-presented by the Windsor Police Service and the United Way Centraide of Windsor-Essex County.
Call 519-567-8719 for more information. Call 519-567-4331 to register.