A member of Windsor council wants to see what can be done to prevent people with outstanding arrest warrants from other areas of Ontario from utilizing city-funded services for the unhoused.
During Monday's council meeting, Ward 3 Councillor Renaldo Agostino asked administration to report back on measures available to the city to prevent these individuals who are here from accessing city-funded services.
Agostino says Windsorites deserve safe and clean streets.
"The situation on our streets is reaching a tipping point. Our budgets are strained, our residents are increasingly frustrated, and our service provided and city services are stretched to their limits," he says.
Agostino says there is no room for this.
"Don't get me wrong, Windsor is a safe community, but we are at a tipping point. If the province and the federal government is not going to stick up for us, then we have to stick up for ourselves," he says.
Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens told the council that under former Windsor Police Chief Al Frederick (2012-2019), actions were taken to arrest and deliver people wanted on arrest warrants back to the places where they were wanted, taking some as far as Nova Scotia.
"We had a fairly limited number of people who were causing quite a bit of criminal disturbance here who were wanted elsewhere in Canada," he says. "We said one way to get rid of the problem was to arrest those folks, bring them back to the jurisdictions where they're wanted, and let them answer for those crimes and rid ourselves of this criminal behaviour."
Dilkens says the goal was to rid the city of the criminal behaviour.
"We did that for a period of time; it was highly successful from a crime perspective, lowering crime. The problem was the Crown's office had a problem with us doing that and expressed that to the police, wanting to know, 'Why are you doing that?' Because it's a rather unconventional thing to do," he says.
Dilkens says a lot of what they're dealing with here in Windsor is petty crime to feed an addiction.
"There's a victim on the other end of that, so if this means we're arresting those folks and bringing them back to jurisdictions to answer for those petty crimes, that's a period of time they're not in the city of Windsor. They're going to have to find money and a way to come back here if they choose to come back here," he says.
As part of the request for an administration report, Dilkens also asked that the Minister of the Solicitor General's Office be notified that the city is considering starting to do something like what they did before.