North Shore BIA calling for more accountability for criminal behaviour

Denese Metsimela and her husband own Jamaican Kitchen and say there seem to be more issues recently.

“I believe there’s been an increase in these kinds of criminal activities along Tranquille Road. We’re not the only business that has experienced this kind of vandalism,” Metsimela said.

Jamaican Kitchen has been located on Tranquille Road for about four years. In the last eight months the restaurant has been vandalized twice — most recently, early Monday (May 10) morning.

“They did manage to break the glass in the door and they gained entry and they stole our safe, they stole our cash band, they stole alcohol.”

The NSBIA estimates crime within a 3.5 km stretch of Tranquille Road has cost businesses hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“Costs associated with criminality for us so far that we’ve collected in this quarter are topping $200,000 to our members,” said Executive Director Jeremy Heighton. “These are members who also pay civic taxes, one-third of which go to enforcement and emergency response services. Our members are saying, ‘If we’re paying on both sides, what are we getting for that?”

Heighton has signed his name to a letter to the City and RCMP, addressing the ongoing vandalism and crime.

“These repeat offenders — there is capacity to take them and take them off our streets,” he said, “so what’s stopping us from doing this? That’s the intent of the letter, and then ultimately to create a community support, a sort of ground-swell, if you would, to stand beside Mayor Christian, to stand beside our councillors that are working very hard to advocate for us and find those effective solutions.”

In an email, the Kamloops RCMP say they will work with the City of Kamloops on a coordinated response to send directly to the NSBIA. They say they “look forward to connecting with our community partners to discuss strategies and opportunities to work together toward our common goal of reducing crime in Kamloops.”

“To date we’ve heard from Mayor Ken Christian, we’ll be meeting with him next Wednesday,” Heighton said. “We have not heard anything from the RCMP and I don’t know if we will, but at least the mayor is agreeing with us.”

Meantime, businesses like Jamaican Kitchen are investing in more security measures to protect themselves against criminal behaviour that doesn’t appear to be going away.

“There seem to be little to no consequence for people who do things like this,” Metsimela said. “Law enforcement, I think, needs to do more.”

by Jill Sperling

North Shore BIA calling for more accountability for criminal behaviour

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