Community safety co-ordinator Herb Sutton gave his monthly monitoring report to council Monday and included an update about six individuals identified as prolific offenders in the downtown core.
In his report to council last month, Sutton cited statistics compiled from the downtown core area in recent years that identified six individuals as being responsible for 21 per cent of the crime.
Sutton’s report provided some follow up since then. His written report noted Cst. Kenny from the RCMP has made personal contact with all six of those individuals, and this seems to have helped.
There has been some other follow up. Sutton informed councillors there was a good meeting last Friday that included law enforcement and mental health and addictions officials. Among the items discussed were those individuals and it turned out many of those around the table were familiar with them.
“Honestly, I don’t know their identities yet, but those folks all seem to know who these individuals were,” said Sutton.
He added, “these are very complex situations, there are no easy answers, and I think it stands to reason if there were easy answers we’d be seeing successes already.”
Sutton said there was a conversation about moving forward. There was talk about using the LEAN model and of doing an inter-agency LEAN value stream mapping to identify gaps.
Another meeting is set for Jan. 8 involving senior management from mental health and addictions and others.
Something else Sutton talked about was discussion at that meeting about the criminal justice system and whether that was the right venue to deal with addictions issues.
He pointed to a 60 Minutes report that aired on the weekend in which Michael Botticelli, director of the national drug policy in the United States, was interviewed.
“We can’t arrest and incarcerate addiction out of people,” Botticelli said in that interview. “It’s ineffective, and it costs us billions upon billions of dollars to keep doing this.”
Sutton said the statement resonated with him.
“So the US is even looking broadly at whether the criminal justice system is the right way to deal with these kinds of things.”
