Bridgewater, N.S., sees decline in police calls after drop-in centre closes

Town of Bridgewater, N.S., says traffic is up and calls to police are down after closure of controversial drop-in centre.

Cedar Place in Bridgewater, N.S., closed its drop-in services five weeks ago and since then, police have seen a significant drop in calls and lockups.

“Our lockups were averaging roughly 30 a month. It was 364 for 2025. Prior to Cedar Place opening, we were about 75-to-90 a year,” says Danny Macphee, Bridgewater Police Services deputy chief.

“We are down to six this month and four of them are chronic offenders that we were dealing with that were lumped in with the Cedar Place clients.”

Cedar Place, which is run by the John Howard Society, provides support services to people post incarceration. It’s been a controversial centre, creating worry among the community since it opened two years ago.

“We have had a transition with the closure with the drop-in services at Cedar Place for just over a month now, with SSODA, with other service provider locally as well as the municipality and partners to ensure people have access to the supports and services they need during the transition,” says Jaime Smith, Department of Supportive Housing and Homelessness executive director.

Bridgewater Mayor David Mitchell says it’s made quite the difference for public safety.

“We have 1000 students less than 250 meters away from where Cedar Place was. We have heard from the school, no issues in the last month again more people downtown. I have had random strangers hugging me in the grocery stores thanking me that they can be out in our downtown core,” says Mitchell.

Mitchell expected the closure would benefit the community but not this quickly.

“The next day, which was a Saturday, I received an email from someone saying they could not park in our downtown because all the spaces were full. I’ll take that for the win,” says Mitchell.

MacPhee used the phrase “as different as different can be” to describe the downtown. His team expected a significant decrease in crime over time, but the rapid decline surprised them as well.

“This was a community push, this was not a policing push, we just provided the data and the facts. The community experienced a real problem and they brought it forward,” says MacPhee.

He says it’s not only changed the downtown, but police response as well, bringing numbers close to before the centre opened.

“We were averaging 15 calls a week to that centre, or four clients that were every day using the centre. That involved anything from shoplifting to assault to public impairment, open drug use, open consumption of alcohol and everything that evolves from that and we are down to 15 in a month,” says Macphee.

“We just had our Earth Day cleanup and the team that did King Street picked up no drug paraphernalia at all, as people would know prior to the closure that was not the case,” says Mitchell.

Jac’s Burgers and Shakes said they were on the verge of changing their business to a ‘bruncherie,’ only operating during the day.

“Over the course of the two years, we totally lost our night business. Anything after dark wasn’t happening. We could do 40-50 tables during the day and at night have 10. We were definitely impacted in a negative way and our customers told us they didn’t want to come downtown at night,” says owner Deborah Dorey.

Since Cedar Place’s transition, her business increased by 25 per cent, a trend she hopes continues into the summer. Dorey would love to see events brought back to the downtown core and people using the public spaces.

“This week was the first time our day tickets matched our night tickets, so it’s bringing back our night business. Now we do attribute some of this to daylight savings and people are out and feeling good, but over the course of the two years we weren’t seeing that night business,” says Dorey.

Support services like Cedar Place are needed, but Mitchell says it needs to be in a different model.

“There will be no return to that kind of drop-in hangout, that didn’t work, that model does not work,” Mitchell says. “We know what it invited to the community and I don’t think that model would work if replicated elsewhere.

“What we do know is that South Shore Open Doors, which operates our current shelter, is working with the Department of Opportunities and Social Development to stand up a 24-hour model but it wont look like this one, it will not be a hangout but will have more supports, more services and more staff.”

The Department of Supportive Housing and Homelessness says as they continue to address homelessness, it’s important to have multiple partners at the table.

“Working with municipalities, with the federal government, with local community-based survival providers is really essential and critical,” says Smith.

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