Joe Johnstone wishes he had dollar for every time someone has tried to break in or steal something from his store.
He’s the assistant manager of the Prince George Andre’s Electronic Experts on Vance Road and as a retailer of TVs, home audio, cell phones and appliances, those big-ticket items are coveted by thieves.
Johnston has been doing business in Prince George long enough to notice the theft problem has grown exponentially worse in the city and he says the anger of residents and business owners being victimized is reaching a boiling point.
“Security is a big thing, especially in Prince George, it’s gotten really bad, especially in the last two years,” said Johnston.“The cops do the best they can to arrest them but they get released all the time and they’re back out doing it again.
“COVID made it easier to hide their identity with masks because before COVID, anybody who walked into a business with a mask on their face was under a lot of scrutiny. Now it’s kind of the normal thing.”
The Facebook site STOLEN Prince George has 16,000 members who post photos and videos of thieves caught in the act doing crimes in city neighbourhoods. Some of them look right at security cameras and brazenly wave while they cart off their stolen merchandise.
“It’s the same handful of people doing it, over and over again, and there’s no fear of repercussions,” said Johnston, who says the site helps him recognize habitual criminals who come into his store. “It’s really bad in Prince George right now.”
The STOLEN Prince George site helps people recover stolen items found discarded in the neighbourhood. People can report suspicious activity and warn people to watch out for shady characters sneaking through yards or dragging carts along the street.
Several posts allude to the frustration people are feeling about the court system and its failure to put habitual thieves and shoplifters in jail. Some victims, in their posts, suggest vigilantism as a solution to stop crime and punish the culprits and Johnston says that could lead to tragic unintended consequences.
“I can tell already that people are taking things into their own hands because some of these guys that are still on the street, you can tell, they’ve been beaten up,” Johnston said. “I’m worried some people will take things to another level.
“It’s the courts. I have no problem with law enforcement, the RCMP, doing their job. I see it. They’re arresting people. But they’re getting released and they don’t seem to care if they have 25 charges or 225 charges against them.”
Police have told Johnston the residential property crime rate went down in 2020 and 2021, when more people were staying home because of the pandemic, but there was a corresponding increase in commercial crime in those two years when more businesses were left unattended.
He said the closure of the two 7-Eleven convenience stores in the city centre over the past six months is a symptom the problems associated with vagrancy, panhandlers, shoplifting, threats of violence and open drug use are chasing businesses out of the downtown core.
“I’m a big guy and I’m not afraid of confrontation but I stopped frequenting there (at the 7-Elevens) because a lot of times they don’t accept ‘no’ as an answer,” said Johnston. “Although I’m not worried about anything personally, my vehicle would get vandalized and I’d come back out to a slashed tire or a keyed vehicle if I continued into the store. That kind of stuff happens to all kinds of people.”
Johnston has a high-definition dashcam in his car that’s activated by motion and he gave police the footage to identify three thieves ripping off vehicles in the parking area of his condominum complex. His cellphone linked to a security monitoring system that delivers a push alert notification in case a door or window at his store is breached. Cameras monitor the building constantly and he and his staff and customers have caught shoplifters red-handed, stuffing items into their coats or handbags.
But the problem persists.
Johnston looks to the front entrance of his store serves as a reminder of the time someone tried to pry the steel doors open to gain access, leaving a gap where the doors used to fit tightly together. The store has posts cemented into the sidewalk around the doors to prevent drive-through attacks. He said criminals are known to steal two trucks and have both with them on heist attempts, one to break through the building and the other to load the merchandise.
“What they don’t realize if I have a five-ton steel gate on the inside of our building with a locking armour door that goes down, so even if they try to smash through the building, that door will stop a five-ton truck,” Johnston said.
He says people come home and commonly leave the keys to their vehicles near front entrances with the door unlocked, and car thieves aren’t afraid to try to open that door to grab the keys before anyone notices. Doorbell cameras will help identify culprits, but for most thieves cameras are no deterrent. The Christmas gift-giving season means more packages are being dropped off on doorsteps and porch pirates are having a field day helping themselves.
