A new business survey in Kamloops is suggesting that a select number of businesses in the City have lost a combined $2-million dollars over the past four-years due to crime.

While only 128 of about 1,500 businesses responded to the survey that was conducted by the Downtown and North Shore BIA’s in conjunction with the Chamber of Commerce, they’ve indicated that they’ve lost $1,044,890 over the past four years to “criminality and social disruption.”

Business owners identified littering or loitering, open drug use, needles or hazardous waste, vandalism, and defecation as the top issues. They also reported an erosion of consumer confidence in core business areas.

“When we look at the cost profiles and where the reporting was, we see the North Shore and the downtown as the two dominant response areas. That is to be expected because that is where is most of the service is,” NSBIA Executive Director, Jeremy Heighton told NL News.

“However, we are starting to see some blips show up in Sahali and Aberdeen.”

Of the 128 businesses that responded, 65 said they were located downtown, with 54 in North Kamloops, and the other nine scattered across the city.

“We then asked the business owners in town, ‘have you made any security changes?’ and 85 per cent of respondents said they had made security changes in the past year. In fact, the cost of those changes is $1.165 million dollars.”

That money, the survey says, was spent on things like staff training and site security, on top of other things like lights, locks, security cameras, and fencing.

Heighton says the survey also found businesses in Kamloops are also looking for a better response from RCMP and Community Service Officers when calls for service are made.

“While this underscores the problem, the challenge that we face, it in no way talks about what is actually being done in this community,” he said.

He also noted the goal of the survey is not to lay blame, but rather says it is a way to open up discussions with both the police and government to find ways to try to fix the problems.

“We must see this data as the starting point. It is an indicator that we need to do more, we need to respond better, listen better, act better, be better for all of our community,” Heighton said.

“We share this information as freely as we can, to act on behalf of our business community, for all of our members and citizens with a goal of creating a more predictive, healthy and robust system for our community.”

Kamloops Mayor says survey results ‘shocking but not surprising’

The Mayor of Kamloops says the results of the survey is shocking.

But Ken Christian told NL News it also doesn’t surprise him, noting the City is doing “everything it can” to address the issues.

“We have know that this is there. They have just really quantified it,” he said. “I think one of the most effective things that we’re doing is the revamping of our community services officers program. I think that will have some benefits once we get it fully up and running.”

Christian also says these issues identified in the survey are not exclusive to Kamloops.

“We’re working on the prolific offenders file. We’re working on complex care in Kamloops and so there are a number of fronts with the mental health and street nursing teams as well as with the prosecution service that we have going on right now,” he said.

“There is a lot of activity going on on these files.”

You can read the full report here.

– With files from Paul James