KILREA GOT JUST WHAT HE WANTED

The motley assortment of street people who hang around the Rideau and
Sussex pedestrian underpass couldn't have done a better job of making
Terry Kilrea's point if he'd paid them.

The mayoral candidate says the streets are unsafe downtown and we need
to hire 78 more front-line police officers to do something about it.
The colourful characters shouting obscenities at Kilrea yesterday
could certainly give you the impression it's time for a new broom.

Things are seldom as simple as they seem, though. The people who were
so angry at Kilrea are more of a threat to themselves than to the
public. They're losers who like to sit around all day and stare at
each other's tattoos, but they are more likely to be victims of crime
than its perpetrators. No self-respecting criminal would hang out with
this crowd.

If you were looking for a new sheriff, Terry Kilrea would certainly be
your man. The hulking mayoral candidate looks like he could run any
bum out of town and enjoy doing it. In fact, he vowed to "lead a
personal attack on gangs, thugs, muggers and swarmers." It made me
think Kilrea might have seen the movie Walking Tall one time too many.

Kilrea also said vandals and graffiti makers will be punished. It
sounds like a pretty good deal. Elect Kilrea and not only do you get a
mayor, you get a sheriff and a chief judge, too. Technically, the
mayor doesn't actually determine how the police do their jobs and what
punishments the courts hand out, but those are details for later.

Kilrea also wants to get homeless people off the street. That's always
tough to do, because most of them are on the street by choice.

If they wanted to do something else, they would. They are unsightly,
but they aren't doing much harm.

It's tough to be terribly sympathetic to these people, especially
those complaining that the shelters are full and welfare doesn't pay
enough to live on.

No doubt.

The solution is to get a job and get a life, not complain because your
featherbed isn't comfortable enough. That said, there are no legal
grounds to just sweep them up.

People will probably like Kilrea's promise to hire 78 more officers
and move 60 more back to front-line duties from what he describes as
clerical work.

Kilrea is clearly tough on crime, although I've never seen a
politician who says he's soft on it. It's a moderately expensive
election promise, which he estimates will cost $5 million to $6
million a year.

Adding more police is the instinctive, some would say knee-jerk,
solution to every crime problem.

It's not just a numbers game, though. There already seems to be a
reasonable number of police in the downtown core and with the
expansion we've had in the last few years, the police can't really
claim to be short of bodies.

There's a limit on what the police can do, though, no matter how many
there are.

A lot of the people who make the Rideau Street area look like an
armpit aren't actually breaking any laws.

It is a popular area for drug dealers, but they are tough to stop. The
police can't watch everywhere, all the time and, even if they do lay
charges, someone else will just replace the guy they charged.

Kilrea claims the Byward Market is a "no-go zone" at
night.

If so, it's surprising all those restaurants and bars haven't gone
broke. It's difficult to determine the best solution for Rideau Street
crime.

It's certainly not getting rid of bus shelters and forcing transit
users to stand in the winter wind unprotected, an idea conceived by
Councillor Georges Bedard, which the police supported.

Bedard's new idea of fencing off the pedestrian underpass will just
move its denizens up the street.

Kilrea seems overly gung-ho, but Mayor Bob Chiarelli himself recently
said "we can't have drug dealers and punks and pimps in the shadow of
the Peace Tower and at one of the busiest malls in Canada.

We have failed badly and we should fix it." Typically, the mayor was
reacting because another councillor brought the issue forward. City
staff have been sent to find solutions.

To his credit, Kilrea's out there on the street, talking about things
that are important to people and putting up with some abuse for it.
Even if his solutions are easy to criticize, we at least know they
aren't empty political talk.