by Nancy Gardiner
Northern News Services

NNSL (Sep 12/97) - Downtown businesses are dealing with escalating vandalism and drunkeness but they don't see solutions coming soon.

Russ Heslep, who owns the building where Langlois is located, believes crime is growing.

"We're taxpayers and we should be protected."

"We honestly believe somebody's going to get killed. We've had five windows broken in the last year. Now we have to make shutters to close everything up. And there's no guarantees from the city or police that something will be done immediately," Heslep says.

"Maybe we should see if broken windows are tax deductible. For what we're paying for property taxes, it's out of control," Heslep says.

Another downtown businessman who's nervous is moving his business to another location. He asked not to be identified.

Janet Chow, owner-manager of Corner Mart on 50th Street says her store's problems start after the bar rush about 1:30 a.m.

"They steal pizza. They eat the pizza and try to run away. Probably they like our pizza but they don't want to pay for it," she says.

Chow says the police are called right away, "but it can take between a half hour to 45 minutes for them to come."

Staff Sgt. Dave Grundy says that the response time is probably true, but it's due to timing and manpower requirements.

"At times, we've had seven members and six auxiliary members all tied up at the same time, with three calls holding. One night we get 30 to 40 calls, some nights -- two."

Loitering isn't a big problem at Corner Mart and generally "there's no problem -- until they're drunk," says Chow.

Patricia Vienneau is manager of the clothing side of Langlois. Her store has been plagued by vandals breaking windows, writing over fresh exterior paint -- and worse.

"They pee in our doorway. I found a pair of panties one morning," says Vienneau.

Langlois is between two bars -- the Gold Range and the Raven Pub.

"There's fighting and cursing -- you see them rolling down the street -- like the old west," she says. "It's not so much weekdays, but just about every weekend. It's not good for tourists. It's not good for customers. There's beer bottles and broken glass. People walk out with them from the bars."

Norma Heslep, owner of Langlois says "this thing's disgusting for us today (Sept. 10). We spent a lot of time and money working really hard (painting) and last night someone just came and wrote their initials with a marker on our new paint. It's disheartening. It was kids, I know -- we saw them. Teenagers drink then walk up and down the street. You see lots of it. To me, it's very sad to see. I'd like to see a curfew put in. They're loitering and damaging things. They don't have something or a place to go that's positive. My theory is that... now there's a lot of teenagers and problems that come with them."

"Foot patrols very definitely would help. You don't have to catch anyone doing anything, just be there," she says.

It makes it hard to be a legitimate business, she adds.

Russ Heslep sees kids ranging from six years old to 14 at two and three in the morning -- hanging out. "I'm not pointing a finger that they're doing something, but it's still a problem."

Heslep met with city council and Staff Sgt. Dave Grundy gave crime statistics which don't show a large increase. But Heslep says "(Dave) Grundy can't base the need for more resources on stats -- it's not the whole picture."

"Bylaw closes down at midnight and the RCMP goes after vandalism and beatings. My suggestion is do split shifts on weekends to 3 a.m. for municipal infractions," Heslep says.

Another problem is liquor inspectors, he says, who are contracted out. "Before, when I worked in a bar, you never saw one after 9 or 10 p.m. Now, I don't think I've ever seen a liquor inspector when the bars close," he adds.

"I counted 40 beer bottles between the (Canadian Imperial) Bank of Commerce and Corner Mart -- broken and whole on a Sunday morning," he says.

Garbage on the street greatly concerns him too. "There's only one garbage can in front of the Raven (pub) and one by a parking lot near the (Gold) Range."

The Raven Pub itself had windows broken shortly after it opened and some local banks have also had difficulties with smashed windows.

"It's just nuts. Who's doing this stuff? We need to do something soon. We're thinking of holding back our property taxes because nothing's being done."

Kerri Wilkinson, assistant manager of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce says it's worse in winter, when people use in front of the ATM area as a place to warm up.

"Considering our location, there's been few problems. It's been pretty good, but in the past year there's been broken windows," she adds.

Doug Nelson, manager of the Royal Bank says there have been five incidents with broken windows and front doors with thousands of dollars in damage. At great expense, "we installed a new high-tech camera system, 24-hours a day and since that happened, we haven't had an incident. There's card access to the lobby. Some clients aren't too happy about it, but the mess left in our lobby was disgusting," he says. "We will charge anybody (vandals caught on camera) and we've put signs out," he says.

Gord Van Tighem, manager of the Bank of Montreal says: "The main thing that would create damage here is the inability of people to figure how to open the door to get to the instabank here."

"Generally, it would be real interesting to see what the video cameras in the instabanks see (in all the banks)," says Van Tighem.