Following a letter from Prince George lawyer Daniel Gallant detailing the dangerous environment in the downtown core in the early morning hours, I spent two mornings, one with Daniel and one without, this week between 4:45 and 6:20 seeing it first hand.
Daniel says this is the quietest morning he’s seen in months.
Not 30 minutes after he says that a man attacks him as we take photos of a pile of used needles near the courthouse in downtown Prince George.
Daniel Gallant is a lawyer in the Northern Capital and the author of a letter addressed to governing bodies in the city, including the RCMP, entitled OPEN LETTER – Concerns about Downtown Prince George.
He says, “since returning in January, I am deeply concerned and disappointed to see that downtown Prince George reminded me more of the downtown lower eastside of Vancouver than the familiar northern city I left just a few years ago. What now is a reality in our city, is something that I had never seen in downtown Prince George before.”
At 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday (Sept. 24th), I joined Gallant for his commute to work. During the six-block tour we see piles of used needles, people sleeping
under tarps in the doorways of businesses, others staggering through the streets.
“Normally when I come in between 5 and 6:30 a.m., there are a dozen, maybe more, encampments on the block where I work (George Street). The courthouse usually has one or a few,” Gallant tells me as we pass by a doorway littered with garbage.
“You see stereos, telephones, office equipment in big piles. There are some mornings when I come down where people are very agitated, like last week. I called in because there was a guy randomly hitting things, poles and so forth with a baseball bat. The people around were also getting agitated, saying they were going to start killing all the snitches and things; people were really pissed off.”
Just before 6:00 a.m., after taking photos of a pile of used needles near an encampment, a man rushes out from behind a shopping cart, shoves Daniel and tries to hit him, shouting that we can’t take pictures here.
The man continues to try and hit Daniel, who swings back before the man rides away on a bike. Daniel calls the RCMP non-emergency line and tells them what happened.
No RCMP arrive at the scene and Daniel informs me via email near 7:00 a.m. that the man who attacked him had returned to the encampment with more people and RCMP still had not assigned the file to an officer.
As of this publication (3:00 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 25th), the Prince George RCMP have not responded to our request for comment on the incident.
On the second morning, at about 5:30, without Daniel, I see a young man walking up Quebec Street with a baseball bat across his shoulders. Around the corner on 2nd Avenue, a man stands in the middle lane of the road bent over for a few moments before stumbling back to the sidewalk.
Three people on BMX bicycles with full-face motorcycle helmets roam the streets. They stop in front of St. Vincent De Paul, where around eight people (both men and women of varying ages) are sitting, lying, and standing, surrounded by disassembled bicycles and other items. They hand something off to a few of the people there. Moments after they leave, a man is openly injecting himself with a needle.
In the three hours spent downtown over the space of two mornings, I did not see one police vehicle or officer in the area at any time.
Gallant addresses a number of issues in his letter, but most prominently, the dangers of downtown.
“In observing my downtown community, I have seen a growing trend of violence, property crimes and outright disregard for the people who are the thread of the community: businesses and their employees. With that said, the fact that business people and community citizens need to live in fear of physical safety, and fear of damaged or stolen property, seems incredulous,” he wrote.
According to Gallant, City workers arrive around 6:00 a.m. on weekdays to clear out the people and encampments before the workday begins. As of 6:20 on both mornings, the encampments were still visible at both the courthouse and across the street.
Something going on in the Prince George area you think people should know about?
Send us a news tip by emailing [email protected].
