PRIVATE POLICE NO SOLUTION

Downtown businesses are asking for their own police force after a
spike in break-ins outside the so-called red zone.

The red zone was created in an effort to clean up the drug problem
and accompanying criminal element at Victoria Crescent near China
Steps. So far it's worked: except now the criminals have gravitated
to other areas like the Old City Quarter.

While separate city police forces might work in places like
Vancouver, where they have the population base, it won't work in Nanaimo.

You can free up an area of hookers, drug dealers and the homeless,
but as business owners in the Old City Quarter will attest, they'll
just move down the block.

We're trying to use policing as a Band-Aid approach to solving social
issues that need other services besides that of the police.

Adding more addiction and mental health services and affordable
housing would go a long way to solving the problems of downtown.

Adding a second police force will not.