Two business owners in Centretown are asking for more community resources to address crime and disorder in the neighbourhood after a series of break-ins Saturday evening.
Jennifer Heagle is founder and co-owner of The Red Apron, a gourmet food shop located near the intersection of Gladstone Avenue at Kent Street. She’s been running the business for almost 20 years selling groceries and prepared meals made from local, seasonal and organic ingredients.
She told the Ottawa Citizen that she got a call from the police at 5 a.m. Sunday informing them that someone had smashed a window and broke into her business. When she arrived at the store two hours later, she saw that somebody had “ransacked and damaged” the store overnight. The cash registers were smashed open and the computer equipment was damaged, she said.
“Somebody had been running around the store grabbing what they wanted and took off at some point,” Heagle said in an interview.
“It’s never fun to be robbed, and it’s certainly costly. The window has to be repaired and replaced, and we’ve already had someone come and repair it. We’re now trying to do an inventory of what’s been taken. It’s not how I was hoping to spend my Sunday.”
The Red Apron was not the only store to have been broken into Saturday night.
Jessie Duffy is the owner of Arlington Five, a coffee shop a few blocks down the street from The Red Apron, and has been operating in the neighbourhood for the past 10 years.
“The security company gave me a call around 3 a.m. … They said that there had been a break-in, that the police were there, that they apprehended someone, and that I needed to attend,” she told the Ottawa Citizen on Sunday afternoon.
“I’ve had to deal with this before, not to the extent that we’ve actually had someone in the space that was apprehended, but the same window that was smashed in this break-in was smashed a couple of months ago. … It’s just discouraging and defeating when something like this happens.”
The Ottawa Citizen has reached out to the Ottawa Police Service asking for more information about the break-ins.
Both business owners said incidents like this are becoming more and more common in the Centretown neighbourhood.
Last August, Somerset ward Coun. Ariel Troster said a large transient population is coming into Centretown, adding pressure to an already “challenging neighbourhood.” At the time, the councillor said she frequently gets emails about visible drug use and the homeless who often have nowhere else to go.
Frontline agencies in downtown Ottawa have repeatedly said they’re struggling to meet the complex needs of vulnerable people who are seeking services in the neighbourhood.
Duffy said the situation in Centretown has been “getting worse” and said it was not a regular occurrence when the business first opened in 2015. She said police found someone in the cafe’s basement who was looking for somewhere to sleep.
“We’ve really tried as much as we could to be compassionate members of the community. We want to be a place of hospitality for everybody, so we help people out with food and drink. … But we’re seeing so many more people are coming in now,” she said.
“It’s so heartbreaking on all sides of this. We obviously don’t want to see people in these situations, but we also need to feel safe and feel like we’re equipped to handle this kind of stuff.”
Heagle said she loves the Centretown neighbourhood and she regularly donates to local food organizations to support those who are food insecure. However, she said crime and disorder are a growing problem in the neighbourhood and the city.
She noted that the police arrived at The Red Apron two to three hours after the incident occurred, but said it was because they had to deal with other break-ins in the area.
“This is a community that’s bearing the full brunt of what seems to be happening with the Ford government shutting down the safe injection site that was operating not too far from here,” she said. “We’re seeing an increase in drug use that’s happening out in the public and on the streets and in our parking lot overnight. These types of problems need more solutions.”
Both Heagle and Duffy called for more community resources to address these issues.
Duffy said a group of small business owners in Centretown created a coalition in 2020 in response to the Justice for Abdirahman movement, named after
Abdirahman Abdi who died after a violent altercation with Ottawa police in 2016.
The group was trying to get a needs assessment done so service workers would be able to access de-escalation and crisis training. However, it quickly became clear that the coalition members were “biting off a lot more than (they) could chew.”
“Those resources are out there, but I think they’re very fragmented. … We’re running a small business and I’ve got to keep it going, and the only way we can help the community is if our doors stay open, and we just don’t have the time and we don’t have the expertise,” she said.
“It’d be great if there was a coalition where you had everyone on board. You need city councillors, we need Ottawa Public Health. We need community health centres. Unfortunately, we need the cops. We need everyone that’s involved in this community to be a part of this.”
For now, Ottawa residents are encouraged to visit the local businesses to help them recuperate the repair costs.
“It’s just important to remember that this is a really good community. This problem is being pushed into our community because it’s being pushed out of other communities. We would just like to have the same level of support that other communities are getting in dealing with this problem,” Heagle said.
