It's time to fix Newcastle Town Square drug problem

When I was 18, like many Miramichiers before me and many more since, I went out west to work.
I saw many things out there that opened my young eyes, but one thing that has stuck in my mind is the time I was in a Tim Hortons in Calgary and found the door to the washroom locked. I asked a worker why and she said it was to keep the drug users out. They’d been finding dirty syringes in the garbage. I felt glad to be from a small place like Miramichi, where those kind of things just didn’t happen.
Two years ago I was in the Tim Hortons on the square in Newcastle and found the door to the washroom locked. I asked a worker why and she said it was to keep the drug users out. They’d been finding dirty syringes in the garbage. That’s when it hit me – my city is in trouble.
“I say that it’s everywhere. I say that every community is challenged with these problems,” says Const. Todd Chadwick of the Miramichi police.
Why? Well, Chadwick says that for a long time, police forces have been reactive organizations.
“Traditionally, all your police do is get a call and respond. You do your reports, refer them to the courts and the procedures of justice are implemented. But does that do anything to prevent crime?” he asked.
Chadwick isn’t the kind of guy to sit around and wait for things to happen. Over the years, he’s put together a pile of crime-prevention programs.
One that I’ve seen work is Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, which basically means cleaning up rundown areas where criminals like to hang around.
In the fall, the area behind the Northumberland Square mall – a maze of trails littered with dirty needles and broken liquor bottles – was cleaned up. A dark, secluded spot for drug users to party disappeared in the blink of an eye. And so did a lot of the crime in that area.
It worked so well, Chadwick looked for other areas of the city to clean up. One of the most obvious was the old Newcastle town square – a haven for drug users and dealers – so he made some recommendations to the downtown business district. A lot of people don’t feel safe in the square in the daytime, let alone at night, because of the obvious criminal element. And unless the police catch these criminals in the act, there’s almost nothing they can do.
Some of the recommendations Chadwick made were to trim up the trees in the park to make the area more visible, which would reduce the drug use and drug dealing. He also recommended the park benches be turned around so that they face into the park instead of facing out, so drug dealers can’t use them to watch out for police.
Sounds like a plan to me. These recommendations wouldn’t totally rid the park of the drugs or the criminal element, but it would help to beat them back by making the place less attractive to them.
It’s a beautiful park. It used to be a nice place to sit and read, or to walk the dog, or play with the kids until the criminals took it over. The decent people in this city shouldn’t have to give the place a wide berth because it’s a hangout for crooks. I say it’s time to take it back.
The recommendations are there, the cost is next to nothing and the whole thing could be done in a matter of hours.
Are the people who make these decisions going to help make this city safe for decent folk again?
“There’s a saying that the youth are our future,” Chadwick said. “The future is now. We need to act now.”
Spring is just around the corner.