MacGregor Block Watch had our annual Block Watch meeting and Neighbourhood Small Grants sponsored block party in the evening on Friday, June 21, 2024. It’s the National Indigenous Peoples Day, and we had this event on the traditional and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Peoples.
Jose Abundo from Collingwood Community Policing Centre mentioned that the CPC is here to help you help yourself. They contribute towards sustaining and enhancing safe, livable neighbourhoods by educating and empowering people to focus on community development, work in collaboration with the community, the city police and other agencies to make this place a safe and thriving city, and act as a bridge between the community and the police. Jose did the current crime trend analysis of our area for us. He also talked about phone fraud and prevention, pedestrian tips: be safe & be seen, and be home smart: log it, lock it, guard it, and their senior scooter program as well. Participants learnt a lot of crime prevention knowledge from his workshop.
Lily Gillette from Metro Vancouver Crime Stoppers introduced that Crime Stoppers is a society and charity that receives anonymous reporting information about criminal activity and provides it to law enforcement in communities across Metro Vancouver. They are not police officers. They obtain tips about crimes from the public and share those tips with authorities. Crime Stoppers is an independent organization that only cares about information about crime. They work hard to protect the anonymity of their whistleblowers or tipsters. They don’t want to know who the tipster is. They don’t log phone calls, and they don’t capture Internet Protocol addresses. Their tipsters are never required to testify in court. The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision confirmed this long-standing common law rule of informer privilege. They simply obtain information and, in return, provide a code to the tipster. Rewards may be available if information leads to charges, arrests, seizure of stolen property or illegal weapons, or the denial of a fraudulent insurance claim. Tipsters use their codes to update tips and collect their rewards. Crime Stoppers also works with the media, authorities and the communities they serve. The media helps Crime Stoppers raise awareness of unsolved crimes and suspects at large. This helps generate prompts. Crime Stoppers then turn the tip over to the appropriate investigative agency. It is only through contributions from the community that they are able to operate and offer tip rewards. Lily also spoke about how they have an elder abuse awareness program.
Our apartment type of dwellings and passenger transfer hub location are hard to compare with other more residential and quiet areas. Therefore, our groups always focus on how to make our team stronger by providing more crime prevention educational opportunities. We tried to invite guest speakers with different topics to attract residents to attend. We have tried to have two events annually and hope everyone can have a chance to attend. We simply ordered pizzas as the main course for most of our event participants who are either too busy at work fighting for end meat or too old or sick or weak to cook. A frugal person breathed life into an innovative idea for our leftovers. We packed leftovers and delivered them to other block members who did not attend this event in order to check their well-being. Our event poster is good to attract other residents. There were residents who contacted our leaders afterwards asking for goodies. The other two guests were MLA Adrain Dix and Block Watch RC-91 representative Renée.
Thanks to the NSG, Coordinators Mark Buhler and Emily Tsang, and Committee Members for the sponsored funding and suggestions. Hope all of you have a nice summer.
