1. CRIME PREVENTION OTTAWA – ACTION REPORT 2010-2011

PRÉVENTION DU CRIME OTTAWA – RAPPORT D’ACTION 2010-2011

COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATION

That Council receive this report for information.

Recommandation DU Comité

Que le Conseil reçoit ce rapport à titre informatif.

Documentation

1. Crime Prevention report dated 13 October 2011 (ACS2011-CMR-CPS-0014).

Report to / Rapport au :

Community and Protective Services Committee

Comité des services communautaires et de protection

and Council / et au Conseil

13 October 2011 / le 13 octobre 2011

Submitted by / Soumis par : Shad Qadri, Chair / Président

Crime Prevention Ottawa / Prévention du Crime Ottawa

Contact / Personne-ressource : Nancy Worsfold, Executive Director / Directrice générale

Crime Prevention Ottawa / Prévention du crime Ottawa

580-2424, Ext. / poste : 28518, Nancy.Worsfold@ottawa.ca

City Wide / À l'échelle de la Ville

Ref N°: ACS2011-CMR-CPS-0014

SUBJECT: CRIME PREVENTION OTTAWA – ACTION REPORT 2010-2011

OBJET : PRÉVENTION DU CRIME OTTAWA – RAPPORT D’ACTION 2010-2011

REPORT RECOMMENDATION

That Community and Protective Services Committee and Council receive this report for information.

RECOMMANDATION DU RAPPORT

Que le Comité des services communautaires et de protection et le Conseil reçoivent ce rapport à titre informatif.

BACKGROUND

The staff and Board of Crime Prevention Ottawa work effectively together to reduce crime and enhance community safety through collaborative evidence-based crime prevention. By focusing on strategic projects, CPO is able to deliver a range of interventions which build long-term, sustainable community action to reduce crime and victimization. CPO offers a wide range of initiatives covering our three strategic priorities: violence against women, crime affected neighbourhoods and youth in high risk situations.

DISCUSSION

Crime Prevention Ottawa is working towards the goals of our strategic plan, as approved in November 2009. The Strategic Plan emphasized the importance of maintaining our successful initiatives while building new projects. The following are some highlights:

New Initiatives:

• Don’t Be That Guy campaign: Launched in May 2011, this provocative poster campaign tackles sexual violence among youth aged 19 to 25 by speaking to young men in language that appeals to them. Many of the city’s bars now feature the posters in the men’s washrooms.

• Sexual Violence, Youth and Drinking: CPO funded research by the Ottawa Rape Crisis Centre, Ottawa Coalition to End Violence Against Women and criminology Professor Holly Johnson to examine sexual assault prevention efforts in Ottawa and best practices. They found a lack of prevention programs to address alcohol-related sexual violence. CPO is working to build more prevention programs, including the Don’t Be That Guy campaign.

• Multilingual Outreach: Our outreach efforts to cultural groups in the city include producing our popular CPO magnets in Chinese, Arabic and Somali, and making our Safe Youth, Safe Communities workshops available in Arabic, Farsi, Spanish and Somali.

• Social Media: We have embraced social media as a way of reaching out to our neighbours thanks to feedback from our 2011 communications survey. Find us on Facebook and read CPO’s Executive Director’s blog at www.crimepreventionottawa.wordpress.com.

Ongoing Strategic Priorities

• Crime Prevention Ottawa’s Neighbourhood Toolkit was launched in May 2010 and is now undergoing a significant expansion. This popular online resource provides ideas, information and resources to help Ottawa residents make their neighbourhoods safer places to live. The Toolkit encourages residents to get involved in their neighbourhoods and to be accountable and proactive about community safety. CPO staff have made more than 70 presentations to community groups and leaders to promote this effective community approach to building safer neighbourhoods from the ground up. See: www.crimepreventionottawa.ca/toolkit.

• Ottawa Youth Gang Prevention Initiative: CPO in partnership with the Youth Services Bureau and Ottawa Police Service, is working towards a comprehensive prevention strategy based on a four component approach: Healthy Neighbourhood Cohesion, Early Prevention, Intervention and Suppression. Milestones to date include two public forums, two educational conferences, two research reports and twelve parent awareness workshops in targeted neighbourhoods. The highlight this year was a project to engage the faith communities in gang prevention work. Based on a best practices report, we organized a series of three town halls and engaged over 50 faith leaders.

• Making neighbourhoods safer: CPO has funded and works closely with three neighbourhood based projects. “Together for Vanier – Ensemble pour Vanier,” “Lowertown Our Home – Basse-ville, notre chez nous” and the United Neighbours project in the Pinecrest-Queensway area. Two of the three have now become self-sustaining financially, but we continue to work closely to ensure their success. CPO has also engaged with the business community in Carlington to address their safety needs. CPO is an active participant in the Community Development Framework and leads the CDF Safety Committee which is currently developing a city-wide active problem address framework.

• Paint It Up! Now in its second year, the Paint It Up! program invested $50,000 in 10 youth mural projects. The program is designed to prevent crime and graffiti, support community pride through beautification, and engage both youth and the community in a positive initiative.

• Community Safety Awards: The annual Community Safety Awards, held during Crime Prevention Week in November, has become an important way to recognize all those who volunteer and work to make our city a safer place. Join us on November 7 for our 2011 awards night!

• CODA: Connecting on Disability and Abuse: CPO’s Connecting on Disability and Abuse Committee continued efforts in 2010-11 to reach out to community agencies to increase awareness about the abuse of people with disabilities. The goal? To empower them to better serve disabled victims experiencing or fleeing abuse.

• Ending Violence Against Women before it starts: CPO has worked successfully with all four of Ottawa's school boards to implement “The Fourth R,” a comprehensive, evidence-based and proactive curriculum for Grade 8 and 9 students that provides coping skills on dating violence, sexuality, substance abuse and violence.

• CPO offers learning opportunities: CPO continued our successful speaker series with 3 events at City Hall and one at the Nepean Sportsplex. We also were key to the organization of a Child and Youth Mental Health Forum in March.

• CPO is a team player: By leading and participating in numerous networks and committees in the community, CPO is contributes to our community and builds community capacity to address safety issues before crimes happen.

• CPO goes to the root causes of crime before it happens: We want to stop reacting – and we all know how expensive that is – and start preventing.

RURAL IMPLICATIONS

There are no specific legal implications associated with this report.

CONSULTATION

Crime Prevention Ottawa engages the community through multiple channels. The CPO Community Forum is the formal mechanism for seeking feedback on our work. This is a group which was established through our terms of reference as a consultation group. CPO also issues a regular email update entitled CPO Communiqué which has a distribution list of over 1,900 concerned citizens and key stakeholders. Finally, CPO organizes regular public events, all of which are evaluated, in order to engage the community in preventing crime.

LEGAL IMPLICATIONS

There are no legal implications associated with this report.

RISK MANAGEMENT IMPLICATIONS

There are no risk management implications associated with this report.

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

There are no financial implications associated with this recommendation as the costs, if any, are included in the current budget for Crime Prevention Ottawa. No incremental costs are anticipated.

SUPPORTING DOCUMENTATION

Document 1: Action Report 2010-2011 (English and French)

DISPOSITION

Council and Committee Services to forward the report to Council for information.