A few spring photos of Christie Lake.. before it gets cluttered with annoying humans

Like any major urban centre recovering from rough times, one of downtown Hamilton’s biggest problems has been overcoming street crime and its effects.  King and James and the blocks surrounding it were long avoided by many Hamiltonians. While the situation has vastly improved over the past few years, to say the problem has completely disappeared wouldn’t be entirely honest, but things are moving in the right direction.

Downtown’s poor image persisted for so long that entire generations of people turned their back on the core, deciding it was too dangerous for themselves and their children.  Even now, any survey of suburban or rural Hamilton residents would likely indicate that crime (or the perception of crime) would be a key reason that they still avoid going downtown.

Recent years have seen a rebirth of downtown thanks largely to the more open minded (and financially creative) arts community and its ability to attract a lot of people back into the core.  While this brought a new generation of folks back downtown, this wasn’t enough to override the lasting perception that Hamilton’s downtown was somehow more dangerous than the core of any other similar Canadian city.  We still have some work to do.

So how do you fight crime?  You hire more police.  How do you make an area of a city FEEL safe? You put those police officers in bright yellow jackets, on the street, on bikes and on foot in highly visible locations.  If you think that seems obvious, simple and effective, you’d be right, so that’s exactly what the Hamilton Police Service did.  And it’s working.

Enter Ward 8 Councillor and Police Services Board member Terry Whitehead.  In a recent CBC.ca article, Whitehead said:  “I showed two pictures earlier today of officers on the ACTION team sitting on a corner for 45 minutes”.  He noted that they were handing out traffic tickets, saying “A lot of people don’t see the value in that.”

The great irony of Whitehead’s complaint is that the fact that people are noticing the presence of the ACTION team and talking about what they’re doing is proof that they are serving their purpose: to be a highly visible police presence to act as a deterrent to crime. In the case of Whitehead’s example, they were ALSO handing out tickets.  Had an emergency occurred in the core (Hamilton’s densest employment sector and residential area) then they certainly would have been called on to assist and been in a perfect position to do so.

We always need to look at policing and police budgets with a critical eye.  While policing is obviously a necessity, we need to be on the lookout for ways to make the service more efficient and accountable.  The ACTION team has always been exactly that.  They are an omnipresent signal to those working, living and playing in the core– and those who might decide to commit crimes– that we are willing to invest time and energy to keep people there safe.  Many would call that a very efficient use of personnel and of taxpayer dollars.  It’s a shame that reality has been lost on Councillor Whitehead.

CBC Hamilton: Downtown Hamilton police team a waste of time and money, councillor says