'IT'S CRAZY': Niagara West MP says Grimsby jewelry store robbed third time

Article content

Dean Allison says he’s “never seen anything like this’ after serving as Conservative Niagara West MP for the last 21 years — until now.

On Thursday, Allison posted a video on social media that was shared with him of a jewelry store, Harmony Jewellers, near his campaign office in Grimsby, Ont., east of Hamilton, being robbed that day around 11:25 a.m. for the third time since January — most recently with a truck being backed through the front window.

He said the Liberals’ “soft-on-crime approach” is not helping matters one bit.

The first incident in January was reportedly a crash-and-grab with sledgehammers. Then, in February, it was three masked youths carrying backpacks whose suspicious activity caused them to leave the store without stealing anything.

Niagara Regional Police are area of all three incidents and are investigating.

“It’s crazy, huh? It’s sad,” Allison said of the latest one.

“I have a friend here who’s a police officer in Peel and he says they do that all the time in Toronto. This has never happened before in sort of small-town Ontario. This one involved apparently three stolen vehicles (the truck, and two getaways.) It’s very troubling and frustrating to see something like this happen. They were in and out in less than a minute. It’s just crazy to me how bold these guys were.”

Allison says Harmony Jewellers has been in business for 50 years in Grimsby, which has a population of about 30,000.

“It’s very unusual for us here in Grimsby,” said the MP of the jewelry store being repeatedly targeted.

“I think this is happening everywhere. One of the issues for sure (is that) I don’t think people fear any type of consequences. So the reality is, the sort of Liberal, soft-on-crime approach has emboldened these people. We don’t know who they are. Their faces are covered. They could be young people. It doesn’t matter. The point is there’s no fear of taking any kind of responsibility. I’ve got a number of police friends that say we work hard to get people who are doing bad things and that when they get in and book them, they’re released by the afternoon and go out and re-offend.”

In other words, Allison is in favour of many Canadian police forces’ pleas for bail reform in Canada.

“Absolutely, for sure,” he said. “Our police officers are doing a phenomenal job, they’re working hard. I think they’re getting frustrated with the fact that they continue to re-arrest and re-book a number of these criminals. I’ve never seen anything like this (crime-wise) until this year (here). We’ve never seen anything this violent show up in the community before.”

Allison is also in favour of getting the community involved via community watch programs.