Video captures thief stealing from Vancouver restaurant employees’ locker room

A Vancouver business is trying to bring consciousness to nan plight of downtown shop owners and possibly promote others to summation their information aft its labor had their belongings stolen from its locker room.

Surveillance video of Zaatar w Zeit’s backmost room connected Monday greeting astir 8:45 a.m. shows a man dressed successful a achromatic chapeau and jacket, greenish pants and achromatic sneakers.

He pauses concisely to adjacent astir nan area earlier casually stepping towards nan worker lockers, checking into rooms and complete his enarthrosis arsenic he walks. He past proceeds to firearm done and return 2 bags and a overgarment earlier making a hurried exit.

This isn’t nan first clip nan business has had to woody pinch theft, pinch different videos showing group stepping successful and attempting to bargain items earlier being confronted by unit and fleeing aliases becoming violent.

Zaatar w Zeit’s head Joanne Zarife says nan business knowledgeable immoderate level of crime from erstwhile it opened successful 2019, but saw a crisp diminution precocious past year. However, a fewer months ago, incidents began to rise.

“It’s horrible,” she said.

“We already person to woody pinch expanding wages, expanding taxes, and now we person to woody pinch information and recruiting labor and make judge you’re going to beryllium safe here.”

She says past twelvemonth unit were frightened to travel to activity aft a man was stabbed to decease by a alien astatine nan Starbucks adjacent door, but this is nan first clip her labor person been robbed. She points to homelessness arsenic a main issue.

“We want group to consciousness safe erstwhile they participate here. It’s for illustration their location and now they’re entering our location and they’re destroying our location and they’re affecting nan employees. It affects intelligence health. It affects everything.”

The BC Restaurant and Foodservices Association says hospitality businesses are already struggling to support unit while facing accrued costs.

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“This does not thief america astatine a clip erstwhile we’re trying to enlistee and support group successful our restaurants. This worldly benignant of scares them distant a small bit,” BCRFA president and CEO Ian Tostenson said, adding crime and homelessness are nan biggest issues to his members.

“Crime keeps our unit nervous. Crime keeps group distant and homelessness does nan aforesaid thing.”

Tostenson believes some issues will characteristic prominently successful this year’s upcoming provincial election.

Back astatine Zaatar w Zeit, constabulary are investigating this latest theft, but nary arrests person been made. Zarife believes it’s improbable nan personification responsible will beryllium caught aliases look consequences.

She says while nan theft and vandalism aren’t pushing her to financial ruin, it’s still taking its toll.

“I want to expand. I want to unfastened much locations. I’m not looking into downtown anymore,” she said.

“I’m looking extracurricular of downtown because it’s costly and you person nan homeless… The rent is not really justified here.”

For now, she has added an other fastener to her backmost door, changed her store’s hours to adjacent earlier and made judge 2 group are ever connected unit astatine each times, particularly during closing time.