Citizen Crime-Busters Step Up Because NDP Has Backed Down 
WINNIPEG – Another weekend of murders, shootings, stabbings and beatings in Winnipeg and rural Manitoba has prompted a volunteer crime squad to offer aid to Manitobans in the absence of a crime-fighting plan from the NDP government, said Progressive Conservative Justice critic Gerald Hawranik.

“Manitobans’ sense of safety and security has been eroded,” Hawranik said. “The Guardian Angels – a respectable citizen patrol group – sees the seriousness of the situation and has offered to intervene in hopes of restoring order to our streets. The NDP, meanwhile, sit idle and point the finger of blame everywhere but at themselves.”

Hawranik said in the past eight years, the NDP has failed to develop and implement meaningful crime prevention strategies, programs to address the root causes of crime, such as child poverty and addiction, and has made no tangible progress to address backlogs in provincial courts and over-crowding in provincial jails.

“Under this NDP government, Manitoba has the second highest child poverty rate in Canada – a factor experts agree has a significant influence on the crime rate,” Hawranik said. “We need more police officers on the streets, more prosecutors to cut through the court backlog, more jail space. The NDP wants Manitobans to believe that crime is a federal matter. The reality is the Criminal Code is but one link in the criminal justice chain.”

PC Leader Hugh McFadyen is to be part of a Manitoba delegation to Ottawa on Thursday along with Premier Gary Doer, Manitoba Liberal Leader Jon Gerrard and Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz and others. They’re to meet with federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson to press for the federal government to do its part and toughen laws for crimes that plague the city and province.

“With the minority that exists in Parliament, everyone has to be part of the solution. The federal Tories can’t do it alone,” McFadyen said. “The soft approach clearly hasn’t worked and I hope Premier Doer and Mr. Gerrard impress upon their federal counterparts the need to work together before violent crime claims more lives.”