WEST QUEEN WEST NOT ALL IT'S CRACKED UP TO BE

Graffiti, Drugs And Now Murder, But Little Action From BIA or City Hall

Queen St. W. sex shop owner Katie Matthews has watched the crime in
her area escalate following the recent fatal stabbing of a St.
Catharines man by a pack of panhandlers working the strip.

The elegant owner of MissBehav'N would have expected a stepped-up
police presence in response to the Aug. 9 attack on 32-year-old Ross
Hammond. Instead, she's noticed the drug deals and panhandling now
occur any time of the day or night on Queen west of Bathurst -- and
the police are nowhere to be seen.

"It's because of an attitude of tolerance," she said. "Not even a
death seemed to get the attention of the city, the police and the West
Queen West Business Improvement Area."

On a rainy afternoon this past week I visited the area. It's a part of
the city that's much talked about by the out-of-touch socialist
do-nothings at City Hall. Not due to the recent stabbing, though, but
because it has been touted as a safe, inviting area ripe for
development and already flourishing with an edgy mix of shops,
restaurants and art galleries.

If the strip west of Bathurst is inviting and safe, I certainly missed
it. During a leisurely 5 p.m. stroll, I saw crack dealers selling
their wares in the graffiti-infested doorways of the alley behind
Queen St. W.

I counted at least a dozen people loitering in front of St.
Christopher's House at Queen and Bathurst, openly waiting to purchase
crack from a tall, muscle-bound dealer. When a group of us happened
by, a few of the people, including the dealer, laughed and shouted
obscenities at us.

No joking, it was like Dante's Inferno.

And I wasn't imagining things. A July 12 safety audit of the area by
the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas (BIA) noted,
among other things, the "heaviest concentration of graffiti" compared
to other BIAs; "criminal and drug activity, drinking, vandalism and
assaults on business owners" in the laneways, and people loitering in
front of St. Christopher House who are there "for no other reason than
to engage in drinking, illicit drug use and various other criminal
behaviour."

Sadly, Matthews -- and other shop owners along that strip -- will tell
you it was just a matter of time before something tragic like the
Hammond stabbing happened.

When she first set up shop on the strip in 2000, Matthews saw the
crime ebb for a couple of years. But in 2003, she started seeing a
gradual decline in the area as the drug deals became "brazen" and the
assaults on business owners "rampant."

POLICE DON'T SHOW

Warren Lee, who runs the Toronto Kickboxing Academy just steps from
Queen and Bathurst, says he's called the police a "pile of times" to
report aggressive panhandlers and they never show up.

He said much of his clientele -- Bay St. professionals and families
from the St. Clair Ave.-Avenue Rd. area -- are not at all used to
seeing this kind of criminal behaviour. He's lost clients who were
afraid to come back to the area after being "harassed by crackheads
and panhandlers."

Matthews became a director on the West Queen West BIA last November
hoping to encourage her colleagues to spend the money businesses
contribute every month (she pays $669.98 per year) to clean up the
area, remove the graffiti and hire a private security firm.

By this past June, she felt as if she was talking to the
wall.

To add insult to injury, on June 30 Matthews and her husband were
attacked by a group of squeegee kids squatting on the roof of their
shop -- one of whom came at her husband with a shovel. The bike cops
who finally responded (after several calls) didn't even take a report,
she said.

When she tried to raise her security concerns one more time at the
Aug. 7 BIA meeting, they were deferred to the next police liaison
meeting (scheduled for this Wednesday). Disgusted and frustrated,
Matthews resigned from the BIA board that very evening.

Less than 24 hours later, Hammond was stabbed three short blocks from
Matthews' store.

"At that meeting they (the BIA board) wanted to push this to the back
burner and talk about yoga in the park and what grade of paper they'd
use for their brochure," notes Scott Cramer, owner of Neurotica, a
record store on the same strip.

West Queen West BIA chairman Dante Lacarde couldn't be reached for
comment. However, in a recent letter to the editor, he noted the BIA
has an "active and ongoing sub-committee" dealing directly with
community safety.

"The BIA has been working ... to address the issue of community safety
by creating a round table that consists of all area stakeholders,
including police, business owners, area residents and the deputy
mayor's office, to move as expeditiously as possible to deal with the
continued presence of out-of-town homeless youth and other vagrancies
that clutter the community," Lacarde wrote.

Deputy mayor Pantalone (who's come under fire for declaring the
neighbourhood one of the safest in the city) conceded there are "some
problems," but he doesn't think the whole area "should be tainted.

"It's not the armpit of Toronto," he said.

He said he knows Matthews "represents a minority view" on the BIA and
resigned because they wouldn't agree with her.

"I believe there should be a holistic solution ... those who need help
should be helped but no one should infringe on the rights of ordinary
citizens," he said.

A REALIZATION

He insisted there's now a realization by all the players (residents,
police, himself, St. Christopher's House) that there's a need to do
something and they're beginning to do something in a coordinated fashion.

"I think if you go there a year from now, you'll see a marked change,"
he said, noting he's asked 14 Division to pay particular attention to
this area and he believes they're taking the concerns seriously.

Matthews, Lee and Cramer fear it's all too little, too late.

"They (the politicians, the police and the BIA) are either in total
denial or totally refuse to confront this situation," said Matthews.

"If they had acted a year ago, maybe that young man would not have
died ... this didn't need to happen."