Police spouses take action against crime

There isn’t a day that passes that Jeannine Kruger doesn’t worry for her husband’s safety.

As the spouse of a Winnipeg police officer, she says violence in the city worries her sick.

“The triple homicides and the poor taxi driver being killed are just the most recent examples of crime in this city. We hear about it time and time again,” Kruger said.

“Every night my husband comes home I thank God a little bit and then I get up and do it all over again the next day.”

Kruger’s concerns hit all too close to home in December 2006 when she received word three police officers were shot during a raid on Jubilee Avenue.

“That’s when we had seen enough, the wives of other officers and I decided to start a petition. We wanted the situation in Winnipeg to be really looked at,” Kruger said.

“We started off with just wanting to get our family and friends to sign as a way to empower us and voice our opinions instead of sitting back and gripping about the situation.”

The petition is calling for stricter sentencing for repeat offenders and demanding that criminals serve their maximum sentence for violent crimes.

To date, the petition online at www.mts.net/~penz has collected close to 1,100 signatures, with another 500 collected on paper.

“We will run the petition until the end of May and during the first week of June we would like to take it to the Legislature grounds,” Kruger said.

Despite being unsure on how effective the petition may be in passing legislation, Rick Linden, a sociology prof at the University of Manitoba, says it violent crime an issue that requires some attention.

“The crime rate is obviously too high because we have one of the highest crime rate in Canada.

“An interesting comparison would be Quebec City, it had zero murders in 2007 and is the same size as Winnipeg. So we obviously have a long way to go,” Linden said.

The good news, Linden points out, is that crime is down 38%, according to the City of Winnipeg’s CrimeStat system.

CrimeStat statistics take into account all crimes that have occurred since Jan. 1, 2008.

“Not to say the battle is over because we will still be among the highest even with that decline,” Linden said

“But, it is to say there are some things happening in the city that are positive in the crime world for the first time in a long time.”

The five women who started the petition are also applauding Bill C-2, the Tackling Violent Crime Act that passed on Feb. 28.

The new bill calls for tougher mandatory jail time for serious gun crimes.

“It seems the government has made progress in addressing the issue, but it is important we don’t stop now,” said Diane Murray, whose husband, Donald, was shot in the Jubilee Avenue incident.

“The criminals will not be the ones changing, if we want change to happen it will have to come from people like us who are making their voices heard.”