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\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\nLast summer, Winnipeg police launched an initiative deploying officers to Osborne Village in an effort to curb crime and retail theft, but now, as we look ahead to summer 2026, one business owner who has been vocal about the issue says he thinks the problem is only getting worse.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I compare last year to this year, it was pretty much the same, I can say a little more incidents [have] happened.\u00a0Last year, it happened maybe once or twice a week, and this year it\u2019s the same, maybe four or five times a week,\u201d said Mridul Vohra, the owner of Fresh Slice at River and Osborne.<\/p>\n
Vohra spoke last July at the Winnipeg police event to launch the initiative, which was started due to a 44 per cent increase in assaults at the time.\u00a0He says since then, he has noticed more of a police presence, but it hasn\u2019t helped.\u00a0On Tuesday morning penned a letter to the Premier and other stakeholders.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven last Thursday, early morning about 3 a.m., a guy was in my store, threatening first my employee, and then one of my employees when she tried to close the door, the guy hit her, and also [showed] bad sexual symbols to my employees and things like that,\u201d said Vohra.<\/p>\n
Ashok Malhotra has owned a jewellery store with his wife in Osborne for six years.\u00a0He feels the added presence has acted as a major deterrent.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a good program, it helps, but it hasn\u2019t eliminated everything,\u201d said Malhotra. \u201cThey\u2019ve been great for this area, you don\u2019t even see the riff raff sometimes, you know, they know that the cops are here, so they move away, and that\u2019s what we need, we need this place to become vibrant like it used to be once upon a time, and that\u2019s only going to happen if we have security in the area.\u201d<\/p>\n
Winnipeg Police say, \u201cWe are also continuing to track the number of incidents and arrests that result from our proactive policing and are happy to report that although the numbers are down, that is great news as it means that slowly but surely, we are making a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Vohra, he says the root of the problem lies not with a lack of enforcement, but with bail legislation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve seen people from my store who got arrested, and they have 10 charges, or over 10 charges, and then still they\u2019re out, so it\u2019s just about the justice system, I can say, because I\u2019m going to call 9-1-1, and they\u2019re going to arrest the person, and then now what? You know, he\u2019s back on the street the next day,\u201d said Vohra.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\tOsborne Village businesses have mixed feelings on police efforts to curb crime. (Eddie Huband, CityNews) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last summer, Winnipeg police launched an initiative deploying officers to Osborne Village in an effort to curb crime…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-635317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}