By Tom Mark

Public Safety A Priority For Enderby

Dec 20, 2017 | 9:19 AM

Enderby Council is requesting to meet with the RCMP in January to talk about safety issues.

Mayor Greg McCune says council`s safety committee wants to connect with the officer assigned to the city to ensure the police know what its concerns are.

It`s mostly drug dealing and making sure dealers are dealt with and especially kept away from schools.

“They`ll sell to whoever, they don`t really care. So if they get six or eight 16 year old students from the high school that think oh cocaine is a real cool thing that we should try, then, I mean, we`ve made a big mistake then.”

McCune says you can`t underestimate the effect even just one small time dealer can have on the community.`

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Council will be looking at various ways to to keep the community clean, including tough bylaws on absentee landlords.

“Às these houses show up in town where, you know, some landlord from Manitoba has a place here he wants to eventually retire to and he decides he`s just going to rent it out for cash to whoever and then he finds out it`s seven drug dealers, I mean that`s not good for the community.”

McCune says Enderby also needs to prepare for when marijuana is legalized next year.

That includes strong bylaws and to understand how the RCMP is preparing to deal with that.

Businesses will also be encouraged to get involved in protecting the community.

“So we just want to go around and just have people understand the onus is kind of on a lot of people to just make it better. You can add lighting to your business. there`s lots of things a person can do. We`re willing to look at all those programs.“

He points to an incident about a year ago where a business with several cameras was broken into but most weren`t working, preventing the arrest of a suspect.

by Tom Mark