The Windsor Police Service’s restructuring to fight the plague of downtown crime has paid off with several hundred arrests and drug seizures in the first three months of 2019.

“We’ve certainly had an increase in arrests,” Deputy Chief Brad Hill said Thursday after discussing the issue at a police board meeting. “The court system has seen it, the jail has seen it. We’ve had comments from South West Detention Centre on the number of inmates they’re seeing coming from us.”

Distroscale

The response on the ground is great

The service’s City Centre Patrol arrested 202 people for new crimes from January to March.

The officers also executed an additional 100 outstanding arrest warrants for previous crimes. But Hill added that doesn’t mean another 100 people were arrested. One individual might have been facing several warrants, he said. The unit also laid 259 drug charges.

Nine of those people arrested had fled other jurisdictions where they were wanted. Police sent them back to where they came from.

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The new Problem Oriented Policing Unit, initially created to add extra officers in the core to address the problems there, also arrested 202 people for new crimes in the first quarter of the year.

The unit, which can be deployed elsewhere in the city as the need arises, executed 257 outstanding arrest warrants downtown and shipped two people back to other jurisdictions.

The POP unit also laid 247 drug charges in the core, on top of arrests for a wide range of other crimes including break and enter, thefts from cars, and assault.

Photo by Dax Melmer / Windsor Star

“I believe that a lot of our crime is drug related,” said Hill. “You can’t quantify exactly what is drug related. But there certainly is a drug problem. That drug problem is fed by people stealing and breaking into cars, and converting items to cash so they can buy drugs.”

In one case, the POP unit checked on a developmentally delayed man who was frequently bullied by drug users into using his apartment at 333 Glengarry Ave. as a flophouse. Police arrested two men and “cleared the apartment of several unsavoury characters.”

The unit also arrested a man who was smoking fentanyl in the bathroom of the downtown McDonald’s, and another man who was doing drugs in the library bathroom after allegedly stealing a laptop in the building.

The POP unit also arrested a woman in the alley between Aylmer and Glengarry avenues. She was wanted for robbery, kidnapping, assault with a weapon and several other crimes. She added another charge for allegedly biting and kicking officers.

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Hill said “recidivism” is a problem, and many of those arrested don’t remain behind bars for long, but even a few days can make a difference.

“Our property crime unit will focus on repeat offenders,” he said. “We see that when certain people are in custody our break and enters will go down. When those people get released from custody our break and enters will go up. But because we know they’re getting released, that gives us an opportunity to focus on them and hopefully arrest them again.”

Photo by Dax Melmer / Windsor Star

Despite his concerns about the revolving door issue, Ward 3 Coun. Rino Bortolin said he was happy with the results of increased police activity downtown.

He said he’d like to see additional statistics about Windsor police interacting with or handing off calls to other agencies. That would show how much police are working with those agencies, as well as how many calls are not crime related, he said.

“The response on the ground is great,” said Bortolin, also a police board member. “We’ve been seeing residents and business owners really happy about the presence and the heightened policing and attention. So now, my concern was more about can we get a wider array of statistics to track as many things as possible.”

Photo by Dax Melmer / Windsor Star

Photo by Dax Melmer / Windsor Star

Photo by Dax Melmer / Windsor Star