St. Catharines Downtown Association

St. Catharines councillors want answers about why the city and businesses pay tens of thousands of dollars per year to beef up police presence in known trouble spots, such as downtown and Port Dalhousie’s bar area.

Councillors voted unanimously Monday night to request Niagara Regional Police Chief Wendy Southall to provide an explanation at an upcoming council meeting.

“I was just surprised to see it raised, I guess, in an aggressive manner,” Southall told members of the police services board at a meeting Thursday morning.

Southall is slated to appear before council May 11, along with Deputy Chief Joe Matthews and other members of police brass.

The dollars-for-extra-protection issue came up after the St. Catharines Downtown Association made a presentation to council, noting calls for police service in the core had dropped significantly since additional officers began patrolling the area.

Downtown merchants in the association and the city pay approximately $57,000 a year for special duty police officers to patrol downtown streets on foot.

A similar arrangement is in place in Port Dalhousie where bar owners have shelled out roughly $25,000 for extra policing on weekends between the May long weekend and Labour Day for each of the past two years.

Niagara Regional Police absorbed an equal share of the cost for putting extra officers on duty to curb unruly behaviour from bar patrons.

Please see full story by P. Downs in The St. Catharines Standard at: