Editor, The News:
Re: Maple Ridge man dies from stab wounds (mapleridgenews.com).
The Sunday stabbing death in downtown Maple Ridge is only the latest in an endless wave of criminal activity which threatens to turn our downtown area into an undesirable, unsafe and unlivable ghetto.
Municipal council has spent millions of dollars in recent years beautifying 224th Street and Memorial Peace Park, but little enough attention has been directed towards reducing crime immediately to the west of this favoured area despite ever increasing police budgets.
Crack whores, drug dealers and other assorted criminals seem to have an almost free reign in our neighourhood and all we get from municipal council and police are sorry excuses about why they are powerless to do anything about it.
My guess is that no council members or RCMP live anywhere near this socially blighted area so they have little personal reason to care.
We have the Caring Place, Haney Hotel, Maple Ridge Treatment Centre and the new transition facility on 222nd Street north of Dewdney Trunk Road.
What have any of these facilities have done to improve our neighbourhood? Nothing. But municipal council staunchly defends them all.
The best we get in our neighbourhood in the way of law enforcement are seat-belt and cell-phone checks just a few blocks south of the scene of this latest murder.
It’s time for less had wringing and more positive action to rid the downtown area of this overwhelming criminality and give us back our safe neighbourhood.
Sandy Macdougall
Maple Ridge