Toronto Cops Attack Squeegeers - Again!
Graeme Bacque (gbacque@idirect.com)
Wed, 22 Jul 1998 06:28:56 -0700
(In the media as well as on the streets...)
----------------------------------------------
The Toronto Sun Wednesday, July 22, 1998
Cops sweep 19 squeegees off streets
By IAN TIMBERLAKE AND JONATHAN
KINGSTONE, TORONTO SUN
They carried needles, vomited, urinated in public and forced
pedestrians onto the road.
But squeegee kids who had plagued the corners of Spadina Ave.
and Queen St. W. disappeared yesterday after police arrests
aimed at cleaning up the corner.
Det.-Const. Shawn Elliott and officers from 14 Division arrested
19 squeegee kids, mostly from Montreal, and charged them with
mischief and causing a disturbance.
"It's unfortunate the way their lifestyles are, but you've got to
consider the taxpaying business people...and the people who are
trying to enjoy the area," said Elliott. He said merchants told him
"they're losing business, customers are afraid to come in and out
of the store. They're being accosted, harassed."
Elliott said officers saw squeegee kids "lying across the
sidewalks, making people go around them" and even into traffic.
Kirsty Miller, night manager of Lettieri, said she regularly
complained to police about squeegee kids, as many as 15 of
them, who converged daily at her cafe on the southeast corner of
Queen and Spadina.
"It's just horrible. It's intolerable," Miller, 21, said. "This corner
has deteriorated in the last year. It's messy. It's ugly."
Elliott said officers found squeegee kids with needles during the
arrests on Saturday and Monday nights. "A lot of them are
admitted heroin addicts," he said.
--
#############
Graeme Bacque
<http://web.arcos.org/gbacque>
#14909975 on ICQ
*Question and challenge *all* human 'authority'*
#######################################