LONDON FASHION WEEK
BURBERRY SURPRISES WITH WILD WAX PRINTS {page 11}
TALKER PARKER’S UNUSUAL WAY OF COPING WITH STRESS
{page 10}
LONDON
Thursday, September 22, 2011 www.metronews.ca News worth sharing.
ANGELA MULLINS/METRO
Calls for help ring out WOA
Stopping downtown crime, drugs not as simple as arresting ‘the drug dealer’: Police Coun. Stephen Orser may have started a movement. His effort to put surveillance cameras on Dundas Street between Adelaide and Rectory has people on the west side of downtown calling for action. But Mitch Holmes doesn’t think cameras are the answer. “I put cameras out back, (people) smash them down,” he said referring to his hair salon. But, Holmes said, something needs to be done about increased crime, largely drug activity, in the area around his business. He and others who live and work in the downtown core acknowledge they don’t have the answer. Coun. Denise Brown touched on the issues at Monday’s council meeting during a discussion about spending millions of dollars to spruce up downtown for the 2013 Mitch Holmes studies the intersection of Dundas and Richmond streets yesterday while standing in front of One Stop, the hair salon he owns at 177 Dundas St. Holmes is concerned about increased crime, largely drug activity, in the area around his business. “It’s just brutal,” Holmes said. “The city’s just not focusing on the right action to clear it up.”
‘Intolerable’ area: Resident Christine Cochrane-Farmer has lived near Dundas and William streets for 20 years. She can’t afford to move. If she could, she might. “It’s getting to
World Figure Skating Championships. Improving the streetscape in the area will make the city look good for national media and tourists, Brown said. But, “if you just take a little turn” into the alley between Dundas and Covent Garden Market, “there’s drugs and a lot of panhandlers,” she said. Holmes suggests more police patrols would be a start. Police, however, say they have increased foot patrols in the downtown core and are laying charges — ranging from trespassing to those tied to drugs — every single day. “We do our best to assign the required resources, but at the end of the day we still have a whole city to police,” Insp. Chris Newton said. “There is no one answer to drug addiction and its related crime.” ANGELA MULLINS
the point where it’s … intolerable,” she said about drug use in her neighbourhood. “There’s needles all over the place.” So many, Cochrane-Farmer said, that the tires on her husband’s electric wheelchair have been flattened as he tried to travel city streets. ANGELA MULLINS