Victoria is facing a public-safety crisis

[Brad Sallows]

Tolerance is not infinite. Eventually some people will fight back.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Tolerance is not infinite. Eventually some people will fight back.

No kidding, all I can say is if any one of them ever came after my spouse at her work, the authorities better keep them in jail, for their own safety .

 

[Colin Parkinson]

One of my sailors stopped a knife attack a couple of days ago:

Another random attack in downtown Victoria sees man threatened with a knife

VicPD are investigating another random attack in Victoria that saw a man threatened with a knife yesterday.

www.victoriabuzz.com

This is also about 5% of the story....

What the story leaves out is after this knife wielding man tried to stab my sailor who successfully kept his distance, the assailant tried to approach an old man and stab him.

My sailor yelled at the old man who got in his car and locked the doors, he then chased the assailant (who ran away) for 15 minutes on a foot pursuit while talking to dispatchers and keeping them on the line.

At one point he lost the suspect who had ducked in to an alleyway but then saw him again (suspect had thrown his hat away and ditch his coat and clothes ), he had also ditched the knife). My sailor recognized him and continue to follow him.

Officers arrived about 20 minutes after the initial attack and took the suspect down at gunpoint. They also had a K9 unit arrive and the dog found the knife and additional clothing.

They took my Sailor's statement, arrested the assailant and left. Apparently the suspect had been released from jail the day before.

My sailor lives in the neighborhood and was walking and saw the same suspect yesterday apparently out on the streets again

You're all on your own and you better be prepared for a fight when it happens, 20 min for the cops to show up

I'm nominating him for a commendation btw.


My spouse cannot wait to leave Victoria. She hates it here and hates working downtown. She also hates homeless people now. Funny considering she used to want to be a social worker LOL

That story should be a PAO dream story, but I doubt they print it as it does not speak about his gender transformation at the same time. A big BZ to the sailor.

 

[Good2Golf]

One of my sailors stopped a knife attack a couple of days ago:

Another random attack in downtown Victoria sees man threatened with a knife

VicPD are investigating another random attack in Victoria that saw a man threatened with a knife yesterday.

www.victoriabuzz.com

This is also about 5% of the story....

What the story leaves out is after this knife wielding man tried to stab my sailor who successfully kept his distance, the assailant tried to approach an old man and stab him.

My sailor yelled at the old man who got in his car and locked the doors, he then chased the assailant (who ran away) for 15 minutes on a foot pursuit while talking to dispatchers and keeping them on the line.

At one point he lost the suspect who had ducked in to an alleyway but then saw him again (suspect had thrown his hat away and ditch his coat and clothes ), he had also ditched the knife). My sailor recognized him and continue to follow him.

Officers arrived about 20 minutes after the initial attack and took the suspect down at gunpoint. They also had a K9 unit arrive and the dog found the knife and additional clothing.

They took my Sailor's statement, arrested the assailant and left. Apparently the suspect had been released from jail the day before.

My sailor lives in the neighborhood and was walking and saw the same suspect yesterday apparently out on the streets again

You're all on your own and you better be prepared for a fight when it happens, 20 min for the cops to show up

I'm nominating him for a commendation btw.


My spouse cannot wait to leave Victoria. She hates it here and hates working downtown. She also hates homeless people now. Funny considering she used to want to be a social worker LOL

Don’t get me wrong, HB, that’s all good and all, but I wouldn’t be parading this around as such a great thing overall for the CAF…sounds like he didn’t conduct a GBA+ assessment of the situation first. As well, he may have been guilty of using ‘non-minority privilege’ in the altercation. Perhaps a redo by the sailor of the DLN Diversity-Equity-Inclusion course is in order?

 

[medicineman]

Man, Victoria is starting to sound like downtown Floodpeg...

 

[Grimey]

Tolerance is not infinite. Eventually some people will fight back.

I think the pendulum is in the early stages of swinging back with a vengeance.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Man, Victoria is starting to sound like downtown Floodpeg...

On the upside, all the 'no go' zones force me to walk a few extra blocks between meetings these days

Opinion: The sad decline of Victoria’s Douglas Street​

If you only knew Douglas Street’s most southern end where it intersects with Dallas Road at Beacon Hill Park, you’d think it was one of the loveliest streets on Vancouver Island. It has an ocean-view of the United States where the road terminates, with greenery flanking it on both sides. Occasional tents, now deemed illegal to the relief of the neighborhood’s residents, are the only blemish on the otherwise idyllic street.

Unfortunately, this is not the Douglas Street that everybody knows or pictures when they hear its name.

The majority of Douglas Street is a grimy, decaying thoroughfare that would resemble a ghost town if it weren’t for the constant stream of double-decker buses at Fort Street. When was the last time somebody asked a friend to go spend the day hanging out on Douglas Street? Maybe if they are going to the Public Market at the Hudson, if they are seeking typically yuppie activities.

When people usually spend time in Douglas, they are getting drunk at one of the street’s institutions of inebriation like the Sticky Wicket or Peacock Billiards. Another popular place to not bring your car keys is the local Cactus Club, which is a wealthy chain that can afford to operate a business on Douglas. That Cactus Club outlet is not unlike many of the other businesses that can afford to locate itself on Douglas, where it looks inevitable that only corporate empires can survive. For evidence, some of the only businesses that seem secure on Douglas are Cactus Club, Dollarama, McDonalds, and Shoppers Drug Mart.

Douglas Street has become the graveyard of small business in Victoria’s downtown core. Even the outlets in the Bay Centre that face Douglas Street seem unable to retain operators for more than a year. The Bay Centre itself feels like a husk of a mall, hollowed out by the development of Uptown and the attractive business climate of the rapidly growing West Shore communities. It is perhaps no coincidence that the only businesses in the Bay Centre that seem healthy, like Hudson’s Bay or Below the Belt, face Government Street on the other side of the mall.

The sheer amount of visible poverty on Douglas Street is growing as well. Pandora Avenue is the closest thing Victoria has to a Skid Row, and whether it is the closest thing or the real thing at this point is ambiguous. Not only is Pandora’s poverty seemingly permanent at this point, but its sad character is leaking onto Douglas as well and cementing itself there outside the Shoppers Drug Mart and the McDonald’s. The street’s troubling decay is not limited to people sleeping in doorways. The many historic apartments, such as the ones above the Circle-K at Yates and Douglas, are decrepit with no hopes for restoration in a city that supposedly still prides itself on its architectural heritage.

It is worth asking: do people feel safer walking alone at night on Government Street or Douglas Street? Most people will answer with the former, and for good reason. Attacks on strangers are all too frequent on Douglas, including a store employee who has headbutted in February, and a driver’s window that was smashed by a rock in an unprovoked attack. This is not the environment that creates a healthy economy, or an attractive venue for one.

Douglas Street will never be Government Street, and nobody should expect it to be. Government is relatively unimportant for vehicular traffic, and one of the crown jewels of Victoria’s tourism hubs. Douglas forms part of Highway 1, which connects to the West Shore and up-Island, and connects with Highway 17, which lead to the ferries. They are two streets that serve different purposes. Nonetheless, there is no good excuse to allow Douglas to continue on its grubby decline to a place only popular after 10 p.m. on Friday.

Opinion: The sad decline of Victoria's Douglas Street

The majority of Douglas Street is a grimy, decaying thoroughfare that would resemble a ghost town if it weren’t for the constant stream of double-decker buses at Fort Street, writes Geoff Russ.

www.cheknews.ca

 

[medicineman]

Funny thing, there are parts of Douglas I woudn't be caught alone and unarmed after dark well before COVID started, even when I was growing up in the 80's.

Sad.

 

[RangerRay]

I remember seeing McBouncers at the McDonald’s on Douglas and View in the early 90’s.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Shame. The area used to be rich with game and hobby shops.

 

[OldSolduer]

Man, Victoria is starting to sound like downtown Floodpeg...

It happens every year. Fires or floods.

And our own population of ne’er do wells are quite well entrenched

 

[medicineman]

Shame. The area used to be rich with game and hobby shops.

Yes indeed.

It happens every year. Fires or floods.

And our own population of ne’er do wells are quite well entrenched

Yupp...my head's on a swivel, even at work

 

[daftandbarmy]

Funny thing, there are parts of Douglas I woudn't be caught alone and unarmed after dark well before COVID started, even when I was growing up in the 80's.

Sad.

I saw a guy the other day just off of Douglas and View Street junction, slumped in a stairwell unconscious, with a needle in his hand. He'd clearly checked out after shooting up.

Yes, I kept walking...

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

I saw a guy the other day just off of Douglas and View Street junction, slumped in a stairwell unconscious, with a needle in his hand. He'd clearly checked out after shooting up.

Yes, I kept walking...

I was in Vancouver over the weekend. Took a drive down Hastings just to show my wife. "See honey, things aren't so bad in Victoria!"

I did like the solitary VPD car sitting there with their lights on, Officer on their cellphone sitting in the car. About a 100 street people are beside them just tweaking.

Every single one of those people should be institutionalized, housed, fed, etc. Until such time that they are capable of looking after themselves.

 

[daftandbarmy]

I was in Vancouver over the weekend. Took a drive down Hastings just to show my wife. "See honey, things aren't so bad in Victoria!"

I did like the solitary VPD car sitting there with their lights on, Officer on their cellphone sitting in the car. About a 100 street people are beside them just tweaking.

Every single one of those people should be institutionalized, housed, fed, etc. Until such time that they are capable of looking after themselves.

My Dad had an office in downtown Vancouver.

We'd drive through Gastown and he'd point to street people slumped on the ground and threaten "That's what happens when you don't do your math homework!"

Didn't seem to help much though

 

[medicineman]

I was in Vancouver over the weekend. Took a drive down Hastings just to show my wife. "See honey, things aren't so bad in Victoria!"

I did like the solitary VPD car sitting there with their lights on, Officer on their cellphone sitting in the car. About a 100 street people are beside them just tweaking.

Every single one of those people should be institutionalized, housed, fed, etc. Until such time that they are capable of looking after themselves.

I did my trauma rotation at VGH, over off West Broadway - we were warned that if we had a car, be very careful of surroundings as the homeless folks and the addicts made a habit of jumping in front of moving cars to get smoked so they'd end up in hospital for a bit. I used to hate running around there, as you're fighting for space with usual foot traffic but also people sprawled out everywhere panhandling and such - my hurdles improved though. When I'd have to go to CFRC Det Van as Bitch de Semaine, before they moved to New West, I'd often end up in a hotel near Hastings and would have to walk past St Paul's Hospital...dodging literal puddles of vomit/piss/shit and God knows whatever else on the sidewalks.

 

[Halifax Tar]

That's awesome @Humphrey Bogart glad to see their efforts are going to be recognized.

 

[brihard]

One of my sailors stopped a knife attack a couple of days ago:

Another random attack in downtown Victoria sees man threatened with a knife

VicPD are investigating another random attack in Victoria that saw a man threatened with a knife yesterday.

www.victoriabuzz.com

This is also about 5% of the story....

What the story leaves out is after this knife wielding man tried to stab my sailor who successfully kept his distance, the assailant tried to approach an old man and stab him.

My sailor yelled at the old man who got in his car and locked the doors, he then chased the assailant (who ran away) for 15 minutes on a foot pursuit while talking to dispatchers and keeping them on the line.

At one point he lost the suspect who had ducked in to an alleyway but then saw him again (suspect had thrown his hat away and ditch his coat and clothes ), he had also ditched the knife). My sailor recognized him and continue to follow him.

Officers arrived about 20 minutes after the initial attack and took the suspect down at gunpoint. They also had a K9 unit arrive and the dog found the knife and additional clothing.

They took my Sailor's statement, arrested the assailant and left. Apparently the suspect had been released from jail the day before.

My sailor lives in the neighborhood and was walking and saw the same suspect yesterday apparently out on the streets again

You're all on your own and you better be prepared for a fight when it happens, 20 min for the cops to show up

I'm nominating him for a commendation btw.


My spouse cannot wait to leave Victoria. She hates it here and hates working downtown. She also hates homeless people now. Funny considering she used to want to be a social worker LOL

Commendation, hell. Put him in for a Medal of Bravery. You also don’t have to go through CAF for that.

 

[CBH99]

I remember seeing McBouncers at the McDonald’s on Douglas and View in the early 90’s.

Well if you want the bigger lads to stay big while protecting your establishment, that’s a good place for them to work!

Seriously though, bouncers at a McDonalds? I feel like this is Demolition Man.

 

[brihard]

Well if you want the bigger lads to stay big while protecting your establishment, that’s a good place for them to work!

Seriously though, bouncers at a McDonalds? I feel like this is Demolition Man.

The McDonalds on Rideau Street in downtown Ottawa was notoriously stupid a few nights of the week, and used to have security guards as well. The shenanigans at that particular restaurant eventually got so bad they stopped staying open 24/7.

Also, if it was really Demolition Man, it would have been a Taco Bell.