Extra police and bylaw officers will be patrolling the streets of the Winterberry/Juneberry neighborhood this weekend, as Halloween looms large and more rowdy student parties and gatherings are expected.
“We have an enhanced approach for this upcoming weekend with it being Halloween. We’ll be out there in full force again,“ said Shawn Dowd, the representative of the Niagara regional police, in today’s town and gown committee meeting.
“We certainly have ramped up our efforts with the amount of charges or offence notices that are being issued, so we’ll continue with that,” said Dowd.
At last week’s council meeting Councillor Anthony Logo raised the idea of asking Brock University for a monetary contribution to offset costs, but this idea was only briefly discussed in today’s meeting.
Said Mayor Terry Ugulini, “We are going to be approaching the university to ask for assistance. Brock right now is paying for additional policing. We’re going to be asking them to pay for additional bylaw enforcement.”
Meanwhile Brock University is looking into its code of conduct to see how they can better prevent some of the issues that the Winterberry/Juneberry neighborhood has been facing.
“We are in the process of reviewing the code of conduct, recognizing that this is an issue we are seeing in many university campus communities across Ontario,” said Brad Clarke, Brock University’s director of student life and community experience.
“We’re also consulting with our counterparts at other universities to best understand their approach and we’re seeking external counsel as well. I would expect in the coming six weeks or so we’ll have information back.”
Mayor Ugulini urged for patience in his closing remarks at the end of today’s town and gown meeting, saying, “Things are slowly moving, but we’re not where we want to be at. I’ll be the first to admit it and so will all our community partners, but we are working hard, nobody’s sitting on their hands.”
