By Dylana Milobar

Downtown Kamloops business hopes cash removal will deter potential theft

Jan 25, 2019 | 3:51 PM

KAMLOOPS — After three downtown Kamloops robberies in 10 days, at least one business in the city centre is getting rid of cash transactions.

The owners of Barnacle Records along 3rd Avenue, Jessie Kobylanski and Rónan McGrath, have decided to go cashless in the hopes of deterring thieves.

“Majority of our customers use plastic anyway, so it’s not a huge hassle to us to not have cash on hand,” Jessie explains. “Most of our customers are really understanding too, they know that we’re like a mom and pop shop, so not having cash on hand is not the end of the world.”

Kobylanski says they’re usually pretty careful, but after the Whispers adult store was robbed, along with the Movie Mart twice, they thought taking physical currency out of the equation would be a good idea.

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“If someone comes in and asks for cash, we can say, well we don’t have any,” she explains, “and making that public too so people know that we’re not a stop for that.”

While some downtown are taking extra precautions, the Kamloops Central Business Improvement Association’s Executive Director, Carl DeSantis says the robberies are not an epidemic, just an unfortunate reminder.

“There’s some caution, apprehension, and concern. And absolutely there will be when theres incidents like this close to your backyard. But let’s put some framework around this. This is not an epidemic. This is not a situation where downtown is the targeted location of all these incidents at all.”

DeSantis says the KCBIA has some advice for downtown business owners.

“We work closely between the CAP Team, the KCBIA, the RCMP, bylaw, and all of our business partners to prepare a crime prevention package, which we do distribute and offer to our downtown community and anyone who is interested,” he says. “Within this document there’s a number of points to basically best prepare your business, take safety precautions, and crime prevention initiatives that will best support the reduction of incidents like we saw last week.”

The crime prevention package can be accessed online here.