From today’s Daily Snoozle…
Store owner calls for vandalism crackdown
By Kris Schumacher
The Daily News
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
The apparent increase in the amount of senseless vandalism and mischief in Prince Rupert has driven one local business owner to put a sign in his store window proclaiming: “window $1,500, prop. tax $6,000, city not caring about youth vandalism - priceless. Welcome to Prince Rupert”.
Rob Vallee, owner of DataBoy computer store on Third Avenue West, put up the sign after having his storefront window broken on Monday night, the second time it had happened during the summer.
“My glass alarm was actually shut off, because about five times a week kids will come by and bang on the window and the alarm will go off,” said Vallee.
“The police charge you $130 every time they show up, and there’s no leeway on that because they say it’s a false alarm.”
After a citizen saw his window was smashed this week, he got a call at home. He went to the police station to find out if the RCMP was going to arrest the two youths they picked up who were responsible for vandalizing the window.
“The cops said they didn’t know where their parents were, so I asked what they were going to do with them,” explained Vallee.
“He told me: ‘well, I’m going to have to let them go. One said he pushed the other into the window’. So I get back downtown and they were back downtown and they were yelling at me.”
While Vallee is upset that little appears to have been done from a policing standpoint about his window, which will cost him $1,500 to replace, he’s more upset that he pays $6,000 in annual property taxes but is still charged for so-called “false alarms”.
“My building is appraised at $130,000, but even after it’s paid off you’re still paying $500 a month for the building just in tax, and what do you get for it?”
The RCMP has three officers on duty at night. Vallee wants more.
“I think, at least, there should be more patrolling of downtown, and possibly a curfew,” he said.
“Thirteen-year-old kids shouldn’t be out at 1 a.m. I’d be mad if my 13-year-old kid got into trouble and they released him back on the street because he said he didn’t know where I was. I’d be mad.”