Uptown Saint John business owners frustrated by response to rise in crime

Jenn Tuttle says she's frustrated with the amount of theft she's experienced since opening a new location of the yoga business she co-owns last fall.

"We knew that there was theft in uptown Saint John, but not to the extent that it has been," she said. "Probably starting in January or so, we were having one to two thefts a week that we were catching, not sure how many more than that had occurred."

Tuttle and other uptown business owners are desperate to find solutions. About 20 of them attended a meeting last week to bring their concerns about rising thefts, drug dealing and incidents like public nudity to the attention of Saint John police and to discuss what to do about it.

City council members Paula Radwan, David Hickey and Barry Ogden attended as well.

The meeting was organized by Nancy Tissington, executive director of the Uptown Saint John Business Improvement Association.

"When I start getting several phone calls … I really wanted to dive in deeper to say, 'OK, we can't ignore this. We need to really help these businesses," Tissington said.

She started noticing owners approaching her with concerns last winter, she said, which was when "it sort of really boiled to the surface."

Attendees expressed their frustrations to Saint John police community engagement Sgt. Jeremy Edwards, who took questions. They spoke of concerns about police response times and seeing offenders released shortly after they were arrested.

Some business owners asked questions about de-escalation training, and whether they could use force if their business were targeted.

Tuttle said her store currently has 14 files open with the police. The financial impact of nearly weekly thefts amounts to  roughly $10,000 in stolen merchandise and $30,000 in security measures such as magnetic security tags for merchandise, extra inventory counts and more staff, she said.

"Our staff was starting to feel unsafe … so we did a lot of different things," she said.

Tissington said the business improvement association has grants that owners can access to purchase security cameras if they need them.

Police encourage people to call

Saint John Police spokesperson Sgt. Matthew Weir said in an interview following the meeting that when a crime is in progress, police will do their best to respond quickly and that response times can depend on the seriousness of the call.

"If it's something that's taking place and somebody's property is being damaged or somebody could be getting hurt, well then we are going to go to that right away," he said.

If a crime is occurring, Weir said he encourages people to call police. However Tuttle and Greg Grondin, co-owner of comic shop Heroes Beacon, have had negative experiences calling 911 and the municipality's non-emergency line in recent months.

Grondin also attended the meeting and said he has had positive experiences with police but has felt recently that resources are overstretched.

"We're feeling a lot of non-emergency lines are being stretched thin, calling in and getting just not the responsiveness that we would hope for, a lot of 'should you really be calling?'" he said. "That's not the answer I want."

Grondin said that the decline in response quality is recent and could be a reflection of how often his store has had to call police. 

Tuttle is also generally appreciative of police hearing out businesses' concerns, but said what owners are being told doesn't match her store's experience with calling 911 and the non-emergency line.

"We have called the non-emergency police line, put on hold, didn't get through and hung up, called again, put on hold, hung up, [and] eventually called 911," Tuttle said.

"At one point, one of our staff had called the 911 line because the theft was occurring in progress and we were told by 911, 'this isn't an emergency, don't call back here again.'"

Tuttle said that's led to staff not feeling supported by law enforcement.

Grondin said the problem is complex, attributing it to larger issues such as homelessness.

"This isn't like a snap your fingers and the problem is solved ... but we need to see that start to happen. And right now, it's like we're feeling like the onus is on us to fix this problem," he said. 

Weir said criticism about police resources likely stem from members of the public becoming frustrated with what they're seeing in their community but police are doing their best.

"The public becoming dissatisfied or frustrated with the response — be it the police response or just the fact that it's happening in their community — it's not just a Saint John problem," he said.

"We come and deal with these as timely as we can."

Business owners working together

Grondin has made efforts to keep communication open with neighbouring businesses about criminal incidents.

"Sharing information, talking to other shop owners in the uptown area saying 'hey, we had these individuals walk in, we believe they may have shoplifted so keep an eye on them," he said.

When asked what the city's police would do with the feedback from business owners, Weir said he thought the meeting was constructive.

"They were rolling around some ideas of pooling together funding and things like that to help bring everybody's video surveillance systems and the capabilities of locking things up to a higher standards," he said.

"That, for us, is going to be a step in the right direction."