Quote:
Originally Posted by EdwardTH
Ha some pearl-clutching old lady got her car broken into, good Lord the humanity no one is safe!!! Hide yo wife hide yo kids we got minor property crimes up in here!!!
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Honestly, you guys writing off this individual's concerns about their safety downtown after their car got broke in to as them just being a whiny, sheltered suburbanite is not doing the "pro-downtown" advocates any favors. Both personal safety and respect for private property is a legitimate concern and to brush off the issue of broken car windows as just the cost of being downtown reinforces the "downtown is a shithole" sentiment that so many of you hate.
I sympathize with the woman. Like many north american cities, our downtown struggles with the perception of being unsafe and unwelcoming place at times, despite all the great amenities it has. Laughing at peoples negative experiences and disregarding them as illegitimate isn't going to do anything useful to move our inner city area forward.
Like many, I work downtown and commute via bus. In the past year, I have experienced:
- Someone (probably inebriated) forcibly hugging me while I waited for the bus despite me telling them not to touch me - I am a male so it was "fine", but I can't imagine how a female would have felt in a similar situation
- An individual on a bus aggressively yelling, swearing, and threatening to harm an innocent passenger simply because the innocent passenger was visibly an international immigrant from an east-Asian country
- An individual (again, likely inebriated) on the bus staring at me and aggressively asking me why I wasn't smiling
These incidents (in combination with a few other transit-related factors) are pushing me towards purchasing my own vehicle, despite the significantly higher cost and violating my own pro-transit attitude. Luckily I have the financial means to do this if needed, but many others aren't so fortunate in which case they can choose to seek alternative employment elsewhere or continue experiencing negative events and become even more pessimistic about our city.
You can diminish my negative experiences all you want (or anyone else's for that matter), but failure to recognize the problem isn't going to make it go away. And while ya'll are too busy ignoring negative factors that are a reality downtown (from car break ins to thefts to public drunkenness to harassment) and failing to brainstorm ideas to address inner-city issues and poverty, the rest of the public will react negatively or positively to whatever circumstances are occurring downtown.
Now I understand that every city everywhere is going to have some odd fellows that occupy the inner parts of a city - this isn't exclusive to Winnipeg. However, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing more to address the root causes of poverty, addictions, and mental health issues that lead to smashed car windows, verbal assaults, and other "petty" crimes downtown.
And let's be honest with ourselves: we all want Winnipeg to have a great downtown. But the fact is that Winnipeg has a lot of other great areas for restaurants, entertainment, parks, and other amenities as well. So if you think it's smart to disregard people's concerns about safety and property downtown, those people will simply spend their time and money in one of the many other great parts of our city - downtown doesn't have a monopoly on the best amenities our city has to offer, so tread carefully.