Lorne Gunter: Safety, stability key to revitalizing Downtown — and we're not there yet

I am lucky enough to have been to New York City several times. One of my favourite trips was last summer when my wife and I attended the wedding of our son (who studies there) and his wonderful, delightful fiancée (who teaches there).

We gained a marvellous daughter-in-law during that visit.

But two trips stick out in my mind today when I think about the crime and human waste in Edmonton’s own Downtown.

One visit was in the late 1990s when the famous Times Square was a dumpster fire, too, just like our own Downtown, although not as bad. The other was a trip in the early 2000s after crime had been more than halved and a vibrant street life had re-emerged.

One the first of those two occasions, New York had one of the highest violent crime rates in the U.S. Armed muggings were common.

Times Square was a cesspool of pawn shops, porn stores, strip joints, junkies and shabby hotels that made no secret their rooms were for rent by the hour.

There were streetwalkers on nearly every corner.

When I returned six years later, there were cops on every corner. Not menacing, sinister cops, but cheery, tip-of-the-hat cops.

Rundown diners had been replaced by bright, shiny restaurants, some operated by famous national chains such Planet Hollywood, Bubba Gump Shrimp and ESPN. There were street vendors with carts selling bagels and hotdogs, stir fry and roasted chestnuts.

Retailers small and large filled every store front.

At the time, the New York Police Department credited its data-driven policing for reducing crime and making NYC’s streets safer again. And I’m sure they were right.

But I think the increased and visible presence of officers on foot patrols was at least as important.

I’m glad data-driven policing is working at reducing crime in Downtown Edmonton — down 13.6 per cent since the beginning of the year according to the Edmonton Police Service (EPS). Using computer data in real time to track criminal activity and rapidly redeploy resources to the worst intersections and alleys was bound to make a difference.

I have applauded the EPS’s change of tactics from the beginning.

Maybe the improvement is a sign of a very (very) slow revival of our city’s core, or at least one of the preconditions for a revival.

But Downtown is still a dumpster fire. There needs to be an increased police presence on the streets and fewer “zombies,” less open drug use and far less human excrement.

Developers can build all the gleaming towers they want, the city can pump billions into revitalization, festivals and entertainment districts and all three levels of government can direct their workers to return to their Downtown offices, but none of that is going to convince most Edmontonians to go Downtown until the place is safe and orderly.

And that, I think, will take more cops on the streets. Not nightstick wielding, head-bashing tough-guy squads, but officers who, while there to respond instantly (with force if necessary) when chaos erupts, are also there to reassure ordinary residents and visitors that they have an eye on things.

Businesses have a part to play, too. (Although there are fewer and fewer businesses Downtown all the time as the city’s perpetual traffic disruptions for pie-in-the-sky transit construction and park development forces them to close for lack of customer access.)

In New York, at the same time as the NYPD was providing a reassuring presence everywhere (not just where their data told them trouble had broken out), BID (the Times Square Business Improvement District) was providing private funds through small donations from retailers and restaurateurs to hire street sweepers, graffiti removers and snow shovellers to make going downtown more pleasant.

It’s a good thing crime is coming down in Edmonton’s core, but absent a public sense of stability and safety, rapid-response, data-driven policing can only go so far.

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