Right.

Uh, and Michael Robson at the time was an area manager for Andrews, um, still going, charity-based, et cetera, et cetera.

Um, super interested in what he had to say and whatever, so he said, "Well, come and, come and join us, um, you know, in our Bath office and see how you go." So I joined as a trainee negotiator.

Um, within two years, um, I was running the branch, um, in, in George Street Bath.

Um, we then became the flagship office for the company.

If you think about resi sales, which is predominantly a people-led business, where do you think automation does have a place and doesn't have a place?

place?Well, I mean, you know, we again, kind of sort of cradle to grave.

We, you know, we, we, we work with call center, et cetera, so there, there's, there's a certain amount of automation and, and, um, response from literally booking the valuation and getting, getting your valuer through the door.

Is that enough capacity for the scale of the problem businesses are reporting?

Well, the property offending intervention initiative you're speaking of, apparently there's about 420 chronic nonviolent offenders they're watching in the province.

And when it comes to REVOI, which is the Violent Offending Initiative, started three years ago, there's about 455 they're watching.

Now, is that really working? Well, all I can go by is what I see happening here in Nanaimo.

And in the last few weeks, a couple of block radius of downtown, we've had fires, a homeless man stabbed outside a so-called safer supply pharmacy no cctv allowed there suspect not tracked down yet two days ago overnight i saw one street person chased two others with a metal pipe i called the cops on that man of no fixed address he struck by a vehicle and killed in the early morning hours there and it's outside the overdose prevention site right on the corner so We've got to get, you know, the humans that are suffering on our street off the street and into care.

And I'm not saying it's the homeless doing all of this.

There are organized crime, you know, gangs in the lower mainland.

Is this just a differentiation between what's being reported and what's actually happening? I mean, are the official crime statistics capturing what business owners and residents are actually experiencing?

While Michelle and I had held down the same job for quite a number of years each, Kevin has had to reinvent himself, at least in terms of career, every

couple of years.

I went to what's now called Toronto Metropolitan University, TMU.

I majored in radio and television arts and That led me to working in radio for about eight years.

I was the technical production coordinator at a small community radio station up at York University called CHRY.

They're now called Vibe 105.

It was just good fun.

I think

You were there, right? You saw this?

Actually, uh, Lewis Hillman, who you played a clip of there, he's a good friend of mine.

He called me just before 4:30 on Tuesday morning, and he said, "Kevin, the A&W's on fire." So I jumped out of bed, put on my pants, a shirt, uh, ran down there and saw what is known as, uh, a garbage can with, uh, you know, you can put glass, uh, plastics, recyclables in it.

Stays out, unfortunately, 24 hours a day.

It had been lit on fire, and the flames were creeping right up to the, uh, uh, the second story, and kind of onto the roof.

And, um, I went, "Oh, here, here we go again.

Another fire.

Yeah

Are you hopeful this will make a difference?

Well, anything makes a difference, Mike, the way it's been going.

You know, three years ago after our demonstrations, the Premier showed up here with the Attorney General and the Solicitor General at the time, and they started the...

the Repeat Violent Offending Intervention Initiative, which went after about 500 really prolific offenders in the province.

The government says, hey, it's really cracked down because 90% of the crime is conducted by just 10% of the offenders.

So they say it's working wonders.

So now they've started up, as you mentioned, the Chronic Property Offending Intervention Initiative, and they're hoping to target another 500, some of them probably the same as Revoy, and put them behind bars.

When you take a look at some of these property offenders, shoplifting, vandalism, do you see the same people committing crimes again and again and again in Nanaimo?

Yeah.

And so, you know, everybody is just riding high with, with them until these allegations come out, you know, that's brought about by a rival coach from a Chicago suburb who Jackie Robinson played against on their road to Williamsport, uh, and they defeated them handily.

They lost the game 43-2 against this team from Evergreen Park and the rival coach there.

You know, people will say was bitter about that loss.

The community was really upset about that loss, but...

there had been this reputation and this whispering and rumors about where Jackie Robinson West were getting their players.

Little League Baseball, you're supposed to comprise a team specifically from players that live in a specific neighborhood boundary.

In what ways, Kevin, my time is getting tight here, in what ways did parents let the kids down?