Vancouver police say industrial smash and enters and mischief incidents with glass broken within the downtown core have extended sixty four per cent considering that 2019 and Global News has discovered one of the suspects in a current window-smashing rampage stuck on camera in Gastown is a convicted killer from Alberta.
Curtis George McCallum, 48, is accused of throwing a brick into numerous home windows at the TD Canada Trust department at 109 West Hastings Street on Sept. 12, causing nearly $70,000 in damage.
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McCallum’s criminal history dates again to 1992 in Edmonton. In 2009, he changed into sentenced to 9 years in prison for manslaughter and irritated assault within the Christmas Eve 2006 killing of his aunt and the stabbing of her commonplace-regulation husband.
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“It may be very terrifying for every body inside the neighbourhood to realize that individuals consisting of this are out and approximately,” said Shelley Klassen of Shelley Klassen Studio Boutique.
Klassen stated she and her Richards Street get dressed store personnel are frequently struggling with damaged home windows and chasing down suspects to retrieve stolen gadgets after she estimates avenue ailment improved ten-fold throughout the pandemic.
“What turned into mainly targeting East Hastings has now infiltrated big quantities of downtown,” Klassen told Global News in an interview Saturday.
“It’s no longer just a policing issue, that is a intellectual fitness crisis and it’s simply no longer being handled at any degree.”
Klassen believes society has failed the most susceptible and said greater intervention is needed.
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“We have to have a social safety internet set up to stop humans from attending to this degree of poverty and marginalization and disparity, and that’s wherein we’ve failed.”
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When it comes to homelessness, the Vancouver Police Department’s top cop said our town is a vacation spot.
“The climate is an awful lot milder right here, there [are] numerous supports right here in Vancouver, and we’re a magnet for the whole us of a,” Chief Const. Adam Palmer advised the police board on Sept. 22.
“We see the fantastic migration west… oftentimes they’re bringing social problems with them.”
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While on statutory release from prison in July 2013, McCallum changed into the situation of a Canada-extensive warrant for being at big.
According to the Edmonton Sun, he turned himself in 4 days later.
In June 2015, Alberta courtroom data show McCallum changed into accused of breaking into an Edmonton lady’s domestic and assaulting her.
In Oct. 2016, he become charged with assaulting women in Edmonton — one with a weapon, a glass bowl.
In Dec. 2019, McCallum was sentenced to four days in jail and 18 months probation for a May 2019 attack with a weapon in West Kelowna.
After the window smashing on the Woodward’s building in Vancouver ultimate month, McCallum changed into arrested and charged with mischief to belongings over $five,000. He has due to the fact been launched from custody for a court appearance on Oct. 12.
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