“When is it going to end?”
That’s the question Mary Simoes, downtown Prince George store owner, keeps asking.
But she never gets an answer.
“I get a lot of promises but nothing is being done,” Simoes says.
It’s the 11th time Simoes has had her Storybook Wedding store windows smashed over the last year or so and she’s had enough.
The city created green space by building retaining walls to hold the soil to grow trees in front of Storybook Wedding Shop and the loose bricks are what have been used to smash Simoes’s windows again and again.
She’s contacted the city many times to complain about the situation but there has been no action taken, she says.
“The city understands the frustration felt by this business owner, and by many downtown business owners at the moment," Claire Thwaites, communications manager for the City of Prince George said in a response for request for comment. "Our manager of bylaws, Charlotte Peters, has spoken with this owner and understands her anger at the constant damage to the property. Instances of broken windows and damage to retaining walls is classified as mischief/property damage. This is a criminal act and therefore a police matter. These incidents should be reported to the RCMP who will investigate them and if the offenders are identified charges can be forwarded to (the) Crown.”
Simoes has had her store at the corner of Third Avenue and Brunswick Street for the last 16 years or so and she said things have changed since Northern Hardware closed down.
Many homeless people that live in the downtown core congregate in front of Simoes’s store every day.
“I hate to say it – but this is a slow day,” Simoes says, indicating the dozen or so people gathered near the store and across the street.
As she's talking in her store, Simoes points out through the smashed window where there are people gathered to use the raised garden bed as their distribution centre. The core group divvies up the drugs and another group comes along to make their purchases. One woman immediately puts a needle in her arm.
At that very moment two bylaw services officers approach the group and quickly send them on their way.
“The police have been amazing – poor things – they have been beyond amazing. They try to help but the problem is so big now it’s hard to manage everything that’s going on down here,” Simoes says.
“One day I made the mistake of giving a woman money when she asked me for it, the next day she asked again and I told her I didn’t have any money for her and she smashed her empty wine bottle into the hood of my car over and over again. I have to escort my customers from the store to their cars because they are afraid. When I get out of my car to go into the store the smell of urine and feces is what I notice first. I have people smoking their drugs and shooting up right in front of the store door, blocking customers from entering. I’ve had to keep my door locked and customers have to ring the bell to get in now because I have been robbed so many times. I can’t make an insurance claim for the damages from the windows being smashed any more because the rates are already so high.”
There is a needle exchange and a safer drug supply dispensary nearby and Simoes believes if those services could be relocated away from downtown businesses that might help.
“Removing these gardens would help, too,” Simoes says.
“I have compassion for the people living downtown and I am very sympathetic to them but leaving them here without help isn’t working. Something has to be done. The biggest message I want to get out there is that we have to move these resources or nothing is going to change and we need to get the unhoused people living here the help they need so we can all be safe downtown.”
