shoulda, coulda, woulda

It should have been a most excellent week...finishing up the bedroom walls, cooking a giant pot roast, vino, beer, friends, dogs, Mambo's pizza, Alice's Restaurant, visiting, the sexy new pellet stove warming everyone.... but this week on Nobility Hill has been brutal. Absolutely brutal. The private security guards hired to clean up downtown have done a most excellent job. They have pushed all the crackheads, dealers, hookers, pimps, etc, right up here into our residential neighbourhood. The guards stand on the corners to town, letting no crackhead out of our neighbourhood. Thanks, Nanaimo. Really. Great job. Good plan. Pat yourselves on the back. You are so clever.
It could have been at least bearable, if it felt at all like the city was going to help us out with this situation that they have helped create. However, it isn't bearable because, in fact, it feels as if the city has now sanctioned this area to be the New Nanaimo Crack Festival. Maybe we should order banners.

It would have been unbelieveable to me that the solution to the drug/crime problem downtown is to hire people to literally force the problem into an area struggling to make a decent go of it. It WOULD have been unbelieveable, if I didn't live here, that is. I mean, really, it's not as if we can afford to hire our own security guards, since, ya know, we have to pay property taxes and all.

Michael was asked if he wanted to buy drugs twice today...within half a block...and he was asked if he wanted to get high by some random crackhead...also within that same half block...hell, withing the same 15 seconds. I have verbally moved people on twice today and Michael once. I have been on the phone with dispatch four times today...and that is only the times I bothered to call. We are conditioned to be apathetic because of the ridiculous system here...3 dispatch officers to serve Cedar, Cranberry, East all the way to North Wellington, Extension, Lantzville, North Oyster.... plus ALL of Nanaimo...we spend so much time on hold with dispatch, we hang up.

Four RCMP officers for South Nanaimo. Officers who are not from here, for the most part...and often can't respond in time to do anything...even if they COULD do anything.

If crack dealing and consumption are illegal, and you know it is happening with abundance in one area, why are there not beat patrol officers here all the time? If you know that crackheads are in an area harassing , menacing and and generally making life miserable to the residents of that area, wouldn't you just have the car patrols fill out their reports parked in their cars there, just to do the right thing? ...make a community police substation at one of the offices here. Hell, make it in my livingroom...I'll make cookies, chocolate chunk cookies. Make one progressive movement. Please.

Again, how about busting the Johns? Printing their names somewhere? Reading their names out loud in a court of law?

Repeatedly, I have asked Mayor and/or council members if they would come spend a week in my house. It's a nice house, too. Probably better then theirs...and I know I am a better cook than any of them. So come already. I'll make cookies...chocolate chunk cookies...I know one of you must be reading this. I am sending my repeatedly unanswered invitations to the newspapers next.

I don't understand all these pricey vehicles selling drugs street level around here lately, distributing them through the hookers or through their windows. Or why the dealer with the Alberta plates has been driving around unobstructed for six months. I can't be the only one who recognizes these cars. Right?

So, I'm sorry, Em, that I couldn't seem to find that really happy place we usually inhabit when we're together, that I was distracted and a bit gloomy. It's like you said when you came back from walking...it is a town full of angry people.

Whew. Where did that come from?