“When will it end?”: East Hamilton Radio worried about uptick in vandalism

On April 30, an East Hamilton Radio employee started a 7 a.m. shift to the peculiar sound of footsteps.

He was supposed to be the only person in the building.

But there was, in fact, another person on the roof, dismembering solar panels and an air conditioning unit to steal copper wire.

They quickly fled before the worker called police, leaving a coiled up pile of copper strewn across the alleyway.

To have something like that happen once in a while, a theft, it's the cost of doing business sometimes," said shop manager Jason Lopez.

But on Friday, Lopez arrived at the electronics store on the corner of Barton Street East and Kenilworth Avenue North - a staple in the neighbourhood since 1931 - to find a front window shattered.

That left him taken aback.

We've had attempted break-ins before, but never within such a short period of time," said Lopez, who's been with East Hamilton Radio for 26 years. What am I going to see next week? What more is going to keep happening? When will it end?"

Lopez is worried about the state of vandalism in east Hamilton, a once tight-knit neighbourhood he said has undergone dramatic changes in recent years - and even more so during the pandemic.

Hamilton police Const. Krista-Lee Ernst said officers circled the store shortly after 7:30 a.m. on April 30, but did not observe any suspects.

No arrests have been made and the investigation remains ongoing, she said.

While year-to-date commercial break-ins in Hamilton have dropped 29 per cent from 2020 to 2021, they have jumped 17.5 per cent over the past five years, according to data provided by police.

A chunk of the increase in break-ins can be attributed to the outset of the pandemic, as abrupt changes to public health regulations and emergency laws altered people's behaviour in the city.

In March and April 2020, for instance, there were 170 commercial break-ins in Hamilton.

That marked a more than 115 per cent increase over the same period in 2019.

While police did not comment on the general trend of commercial break-ins in the city, the data shows consistent and gradual increases.

As of the end of April, there have been 210 commercial break-ins in Hamilton.

That is down from the 307 recorded over the same time frame in 2020, but noticeably more than 178 in 2019.

For Lopez, who grew up about a block from East Hamilton Radio, the uptick in commercial break-ins in Hamilton is a concerning and untimely trend.

The April 30 theft alone has set East Hamilton Radio back about $50,000 in damages, Lopez said, a financial hit made more difficult to recoup by the pandemic.

The timing couldn't be worse," he said. We're in a lockdown. We're barely making any revenue compared to when we were open. And now we're dealing with these added costs because people are vandalizing the store. It's frustrating."

Sebastian Bron is a Hamilton-based reporter at The Spectator. Reach him via email: sbron@thespec.com