Councillor Trent Houk is continuing to call for more action against youth crime in the wake of the vandalism spree across the city two weekends ago.
Among the proposed solutions talked about at Monday's municipal services meeting was greater community involvement in enforcing the curfew and watching out for criminal activity, with the reestablishment of a Neighbourhood Watch program in the community on the drawing board for the coming days and weeks.
The issue of the youth curfew was raised at city council June 14 immediately following a weekend of vandalism, with further discussion forwarded to the June 21 municipal services meeting. At Monday night's meeting, city bylaw 1607, which imposes a curfew on persons under 16 between the hours of 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., was up for discussion and further examination.
The bylaw currently states that a child found in a public place during that time period "may be warned to go home by a peace officer. If within 30 days after such warning, the child is found loitering in a public place, a peace officer may take the child to the child's home or to a representative of the Department of Social Services ..."
As he did the previous Monday, Houk displayed his negative feelings towards the curfew bylaw, calling it "a useless piece of legislation."
Houk was previously critical about a lack of enforcement of the bylaw, a concern repeated at Monday's meeting by Councillor Rhonda Seidel.
"Why have a bylaw if we're not following it?" she asked.
Seidel also heard concerns that perhaps the RCMP was not enforcing the bylaw; however, in their discussions in the past week with the RCMP, they learned the police do use the bylaw as a tool when they encounter a group of kids.
Councillor Grace Lang pointed out, the City itself doesn't enforce the bylaw.
"Our bylaw officers - they're not out at 12 o clock or one o clock in the morning," Lang said.
She said the bylaw itself wasn't so much the issue. She pointed to the problems in enforcing the bylaw, as nobody wants to be seen doing "anything bad" at that hour and would hide at the first sign of a police officer. It becomes a game of "hide-and-seek," she said.
Lang repeated what Houk and Seidel said earlier -outside-the-box thinking was needed to deal with the situation.
Houk said to the area around the skate park and basketball courts are busy places at midnight and 1 a.m. He wanted to see some focus on the places youth congregate.
Lang said users of such facilities weren't so much the problem - the problem was with the youth who were actually out committing the offences.
Discussion centred on how to get the community more involved in looking out for crime. Houk brought up the idea of reviving the Neighbourhood Watch program in the wake of the recent wave of vandalism.
Houk was one of the victims of that vandalism .
He said he had spent part of the day after talking to neighbours, who voiced frustrations over the crime wave as well.
The councillor told the committee residents were at the point where they were ready to "take matters into their own hands" and take an organized approach. He indicated to reporters after the meeting there has been no active approach to the issue to this point and said he is working towards setting up a potential public meeting to get such an organized approach going.
Houk continued his call for further measures to step up enforcement when he spoke to reporters, saying the current curfew bylaw lacked teeth.
"It comes down to making parents responsible," Houk said. He added he also wanted to see more police officers put in place and wanted to see the issue taken to the local MLA and MP.
