Todd Arth is a remarkably positive man, considering his store has been broken into three times in the past three weeks.
Plywood covered the windows of Arth’s Fashion Centre on Main Street last week, but it was business as usual inside the store — and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
“We’re not giving up on anything,” he said. “Westlock is an amazing place; it’s just unfortunate that there’s a few that make things bad temporarily for the good ones.”
The plywood is in place to protect the remaining glass until roll shutters can be installed in the coming weeks.
“We’re going to make our stores look as normal as possible during business hours, but in the evenings it’s definitely going to be more secure,” Arth said.
There have been dozens of break-ins in Westlock in the past six months, focused mainly on downtown-area businesses, but RCMP Staff Sgt. Bryan Clayton says this is not an unusually high number.
“I don’t think we’re any worse off or better off than any other town of this size,” he said. “This stuff happens.”
He confirmed there had been three break-ins downtown in the past two weeks, with both Arth’s and Oxygen being subject to “smash and grabs.”
“People were smashing windows out then just grabbing merchandise that might be handy and just taking off with it,” he said.
While police are suspicious the break-ins are related, they are not certain at this point.
“We always have that suspicion, but until we solve this thing we’ll never know,” he said. “We do have some leads we’re following up on.”
Clayton added that police are also changing their strategy for patrolling late at night.
For his part, Arth said he has been very pleased with the police response.
“I have to commend the RCMP. They are trying very hard to take care of these problems,” he said.
“They are trying to make our community safe and they are.”
At the end of the day, he added, Westlock is still a good town full of good people, despite the impression given by the few who tend to cause trouble.
“It’s just a temporary setback. We as a community and a town aren’t going to stand for this kind of action,” he said. “We’ve got a good thing here, we’ve got good people here. We just need to stick together to clean it up.”
Anyone with information about the break-ins is asked to phone the RCMP at 780-349-4491 or they can report their information anonymously to Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
