VANCOUVER- Local businesses across the Canadian city of Vancouver have begun to see a new and violent wave of vandalism in the past few months, mainly in the form of smashed windows.
A Dollar Tree location on East Hastings Street has seen their windows and doors broken in on eight different occasions in the last half-year. In many cases such as this one, the only motivation for the perpetrators seems to be simply to vandalize.
Of the incidents captured on video camera, the suspect in question smashes the store windows and leaves without ever entering the store.
Cathy McEwen, the store’s manager, told reporters: “It happens a lot. There’s a couple of different people but there was one guy that did it three times in a row.”
”We have just plain old vandalism where they just break the window for fun, apparently,” said McEwen. “It’s frustrating because it takes away my time for doing my job for one thing. It also cost a lot of money to replace windows, and it’s hard to get glass right now.”
Another store saw a recent case of vandalism on Saturday when the glass of the Stefano Ricci clothing store was smashed in during an attempted robbery.
The thief gave up after multiple tries to break and enter in which the glass would not break.
“I’m just so glad that he didn’t make it through. I know there have been many attempts and we have very strong glass which I’m very grateful for,” said the store’s president Manuel Bernaschek.
“I think the police are stretched as far as they can, so I don’t know what else they can do. If ever you call the non-emergency line for something, it’s impossible to get through,” said Bernaschek, who reports every incident to the Vancouver PD. He wants to try and remind people that businesses such as his own are simply small local stores without connections to massive corporations as a means of trying to dissuade criminals.
“People see these shops and they think it’s a big corporation behind it and they don’t think the owner could be a local small business owner like myself”.
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