Thompson is often portrayed as having a crime problem, which it does, but the fact is that much of this crime stems from addictions and, unless anything can be done to help reduce that problem, it’s unlikely the overall amount of crime is about to go down anytime.
In the first seven-and-a-half weeks of 2020, the Thompson RCMP detachment lodged nearly 1,000 people in their cells, and you can bet that a large percentage of that number were people who were intoxicated in public, potentially posing a danger to themselves or others, and that many of them probably ended up there more than once in the space of a few months.
The problem of addictions, mostly people with alcohol abuse problems, is nothing new to Thompson, but last year’s opening of the new Thompson Liquor Mart on the City Centre Mall property, has made it more visible, as anyone who has passed by people gathered near the corner of Walmart waiting for the liquor store’s doors to open at 10 a.m. has undoubtedly noticed. It isn’t that there are necessarily more people waiting for the Liquor Mart to open so that they can start drinking than there were when it was located near the post office, but they are more concentrated in an open area and more likely to be stopped by mall security, who are the source of the majority of complaints about intoxicated people on mall property.
Most likely, there are more productive ways for RCMP officers to spend their time than booking intoxicated people in the detachment’s drunk tank, but at the moment, that’s the only solution there is. It would undoubtedly be better for local RCMP members and, possibly, for those with drinking problems and nowhere to do it but in public, if Thompson had something similar to the Main Street Project in Winnipeg, where intoxicated people are housed not at the police station, but in another facility with a paramedic on hand and people who can help them access programs to help them with their addictions. Mayors and councillors have been advocating for such a facility for years, but the way of dealing with intoxicated people hasn’t changed much over the past decade. It’s nice to imagine that this simple warehousing approach might change in the future, but the reality is that the city doesn’t have the means to fund such a change by itself and the provincial government has been aware of the problem for years, but haven’t done much to address it, apart from making it possible for Thompson to have community safety officers (CSOs). Even that program has dwindled since it began in 2015, with the province gradually withdrawing financial support, resulting in the number of CSOs the city can afford to put on the streets shrinking from eight when the program began, to a hypothetical four at present, though for several months already passed and likely for a few more to come, the actual number is three.
Making headway against addictions problems isn’t easy. Many people who are addicted to using substances, whether it is alcohol, opioids or cocaine, are self-medicating in an attempt to deal with emotional trauma that dates back to their childhood. By the time the problem manifests itself, decades may have elapsed since the incident or circumstances that caused it took place. But given that some addicts will do anything to afford their next bottle or next hit, including shoplifting, breaking into homes, businesses or vehicles, selling sexual services or even outright mugging people, the truth is that investing a little more in treatment could have a positive ripple effect on Thompson’s crime statistics. Perhaps the increased visibility of addictions-related problems that has resulted from having the Liquor Mart located somewhere that almost everybody in Thompson has to go to at some point will help inspire the political will among all levels of government to invest in solutions that actually address root causes, rather than merely dealing with the symptoms.
