November 14, 2022 at 10:55 am
Newly elected Windsor Ward 4 MP Mark McKenzie wants a plan in place soon to deal with the ongoing fire at Memorial Park.
McKenzie first raised the question when running for a city council seat. Since then, he has met with the city’s administrators to explore options. On Monday, he will meet with them again to raise the possibility of increased police patrols in the area.
“If anything, they’ve actually escalated in the past week or two,” he said. “There were several fires over the weekend. One of them was quite large. The fire department had to be called in mid last week and burned down a fairly large area.”
Neighbors suspected the homeless people were building fires to keep warm. Many of them are taking action on their own, McKenzie said.
“They’ll be walking in the park at certain times. They’re taking shifts,” he said. “That’s fine, but at the same time, you don’t want lynching justice.”
McKenzie said a group of residents confronted a man they suspected of setting the fire, but he fled before police arrived.
“We don’t want to see this get out of hand,” he added. “We don’t want to lose the naturalization zone, we don’t want to see anyone get hurt.”