Letters to the editor

Below is a snap shot of Castanet’s home page today. I think for the mayor to suggest there is lazy reporting is perhaps putting his head in the sand. We all know the news media may sensationalize often however that doesn’t change the fact, The crime in the valley is at a critical level. These headlines, not unlike the headlines in the USA these days are going to change the way our future unfolds.

My family moved here seven years ago and I am a proud resident of Kelowna. My child goes to middle school and I am a part of the Kelowna business sector. These headlines do not lie. The violent crimes in the area are on par with any we hear about in the far away land of CNN. With a population Kelowna’s size or for that matter the Okanagan’s size, our crime rate and Violent crime rate is high.

Our business has been broke into eight times in seven years and we were able to catch the thieves once. Our house in a gated community was broke into on New Year’s eve in 2007. We reported it at 12:25 a.m. and we were already the 16th crime reported for the year. That’s one crime committed every two minutes!

I support our cities administration and certainly the RCMP that has this task in front of them. However the fact that if we do not change the crime trend in the area we will see tourism go down, migration of people to our fair city slow down, real estate slow down  and business fail do to all the above. We can put new sidewalks downtown, build new water fronts and offer the best climate in Canada, but if we don’t get a handle on the crime then our new bridge we build will only help people pass us by quicker.

Brian Crowley

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