Latest / Kvetch & Release / Downtown magic mushroom store raided, again

Transcript

Downtown magic mushroom store raided, again · Kvetch & Release

• 0:00
  One that has been coming up frequently throughout the news is a business that is
• 0:04
  called fun Guys. It is a magic mushroom store in the Core on Olett
• 0:11
  Avenue which has been rated yet again, this time a nineteen year old male
• 0:17
  has faced drug trafficking charges after this bust, in which police seized about forty
• 0:23
  two thousand dollars worth of psilocybin as well as twenty four hundred dollars in Canadian
• 0:30
  currency. But just like the previous raids that had occurred, no sooner had
• 0:36
  the police departed than Fun Guys was back open in business, including today the
• 0:42
  open sign was illuminated. This place has been rated last July, August and
• 0:48
  December, and it's sort of one of these ongoing things and the question is
• 0:53
  what can be done about this business? Does it bother you that it's in
• 0:56
  the Core? Joining me to discuss is the word three counselor who represents that
• 1:00
  area, Rinaldo Augustino, Hey, Ronaldo, how you doing ton Hell?
• 1:04
  Are you doing well? Thanks so much? So? We saw this raid
• 1:07
  here again and I think a lot of people are just wondering, like how
• 1:11
  does this place keep reopening? What can be done? And I understand.
• 1:15
  You know you're not on the law enforcement side, but you know you're well
• 1:19
  involved in the BIA your business, you've been a business owner in the downtown
• 1:23
  Corey or the counselor. I mean, what's your thoughts about this one.
• 1:26
  Yeah, I'm super involved in this, and you know it's it's it's one
• 1:29
  of those things that you can't even call out a business. To be a
• 1:30
  business, you gotta have a business license. So it's something that is not
• 1:36
  unique to Windsor. These operations are well funded, these operations are well they
• 1:44
  know what they're doing when it comes to organizing and getting back open and funding
• 1:49
  and providing. So this is not something that's unique to us. And there's
• 1:53
  a lot going on in the background that I wish I could talk about,
• 1:57
  but I can't even talk about the stuff going on the background because they're listening.
• 2:00
  They're always looking for that next step, and it's this game of chess
• 2:05
  that we're playing with them. And it's not again, it's not just our
• 2:07
  municipality, it's every municipality where they're setting up, usually in downtown course,
• 2:12
  and it's something that you know, it's certainly one of those things that if
• 2:15
  it was legal there'd be no issue. But we have a duty as a
• 2:21
  city to not allow legal entities to operate, and we continue to bust them,
• 2:27
  and you know, we continue to represent our people by trying our best
• 2:30
  to get this place in order. And if it order means one day that
• 2:35
  the government regulates this business and makes it a legitimate business, then that's fine.
• 2:39
  That'll happen. But I'm not like, I'm not interested in putting the
• 2:44
  car before the horse here or not. It's just something that we need to
• 2:46
  really get rid of. You know, they're they're they're pushing things forward,
• 2:51
  at least it appears from the outside, and from what I've heard, trying
• 2:53
  to do things the way that cannabis was brought forward, I don't think they're
• 2:57
  going to have as much luck getting it towards recreational status. Maybe a medical
• 3:01
  status could be a pathway forward to them. But again, this isn't really
• 3:06
  about the specifics of this business. It's just it's about the fact that it's
• 3:10
  crime that is occurring on our streets and the core inside of an establishment and
• 3:15
  what can be done. I wonder I appreciate that there's very little you can
• 3:19
  discuss about the proactiveness or the reaction that the police takes. But I wonder
• 3:23
  just, you know, generally, what are some of the conversations that you
• 3:25
  have around with your console colleagues about these kind of issues. Well, the
• 3:29
  conversation, the real big conversation is is the slime in which it's operated under,
• 3:35
  Like we're putting these nineteen year old kids. Someone's putting these nineteen year
• 3:38
  old kid working behind the counter at a lifetime risk because that kid who's working
• 3:44
  behind the counter selling this stuff is now going to have a criminal record,
• 3:47
  right, And it's like there's so much shadiness because it's numbered companies. Nobody
• 3:53
  knows who the faith of the ownership of this establishment is or any of them
• 3:55
  for that fact. So it's something that I know that and it's not just
• 4:00
  our police that are working on something here, but this is a bigger picture
• 4:03
  saying that really needs to be settled. And again I appreciate the fact that
• 4:08
  there is a discussion going on in the medical world that this may be something
• 4:13
  that can help people. I'm not certainly not against that. If that's something
• 4:16
  that gets proven and the people with to know, I'll say this is something
• 4:20
  that can help people. I'm all on board with that, But what I'm
• 4:24
  against is that the almost gangster style business that this operates under, and it's
• 4:30
  something that we need to solve so that more of these places don't start popping
• 4:33
  up again. Yeah, you know, I think back to when illegal cannabis
• 4:38
  dispensaries were, you know, popping up all over the province just before legalization
• 4:42
  and afterwards, and it got to a point where, you know, law
• 4:45
  enforcement did eventually start to charge the landlords. And I wonder if we're going
• 4:49
  to get to that point with Windsor police, and who knows what their operations
• 4:55
  are going to be. But you know, the state of the Core,
• 4:57
  it's it's always in constant lux. Rinaldo and I went for a walk yesterday,
• 5:02
  you know, and this is it's off topic, but sort of I
• 5:04
  think in the same vein of things came across a couple crack pipes that were
• 5:08
  on the ground. The situation for a lot of people there still is that
• 5:13
  that concern about their safety and coming to the Core. Yeah, this is
• 5:17
  it's to be the downtown Windsor counselor is a twenty four to seven, seven
• 5:21
  days a week job, and I can tell you there's not a minute that
• 5:25
  I'm not thinking or trying to address some of these situations. Nor is there
• 5:28
  a minute that I think that over the past six months or seven months at
• 5:31
  the Mayor's office and the city has not been doing that as well, because
• 5:34
  they're addressing it, and I think that there's going to be I'm sure a
• 5:38
  lot of people heard Mayor Jilkins comments this morning on A eight hundred. There's
• 5:42
  gonna be some some some movement on that very soon. So I look forward
• 5:46
  to really stepping up and addressing some of these issues and creating some solutions a
• 5:51
  plan. I wish I didn't have to do this, because this is there's
• 5:56
  no victory in saying, hey, we've got a plan coming look at us.
• 5:58
  No, no, no, this is anot that it should not be
• 6:01
  political. There's no championship to this. This is something we need to do
• 6:04
  to address to make sure that our downtown is safe and revitalized. And I
• 6:09
  look forward to being part of those discussions that'll be happening at city all very
• 6:12
  soon. And you know, we've seen some pretty significant improvements as well,
• 6:15
  including just the green light program throughout the core. Yeah, we've seen a
• 6:20
  lot of great improvements over the last year and a half that I've been doing
• 6:24
  this, and we've seen a lot of downsides too. So there's ups and
• 6:28
  downs, and there's three steps forward, three steps back, But there's only
• 6:30
  one thing that solves it, and it's continue to work hard and never give
• 6:35
  up. And that's really the grid of downtown. And it's not just me
• 6:39
  as the counselor. It's the business owners that operate downtown and choose to be
• 6:42
  downtown and continue to fight dates by day by day, and to be able
• 6:46
  to look across the border and see the revitalization that our partners in Detroit have
• 6:50
  been able to pull off is something that nobody could have imagined whatever happened twenty
• 6:56
  years ago. So when people are say to me, Counselor, you're beating
• 6:58
  a dead horses that we're going to have, no no, no, no
• 7:00
  no, there's no quip for us, there's no quick for Downtown Windsor.
• 7:02
  It's our downtown and that's something that will will continue to work toward. Well,
• 7:08
  it'd be remiss if I didn't try to at least end this segment on
• 7:11
  the highest note possible. Here. There is a big event that's taking place
• 7:15
  downtown on the twenty seventh of this month, which is of course celebrating the
• 7:19
  Detroit's hosting the NFL Draft. Can you tell us about what's going to be
• 7:23
  there. Yes, we actually just had our press conference to announce our concert
• 7:27
  lineup. We're doing a free football clinic put on by the NFL and by
• 7:31
  our local football community year spearheaded by Dan Hogan and Rob McIntyre at City Hall.
• 7:36
  The entire community is invited to come down and participate in some great NFL
• 7:41
  clinics. We're gonna have some NFL players down here. There's gonna be free
• 7:44
  hot dogs. It's going to be a fantastic event on the lawna City Hall
• 7:47
  that starts at noon, it's over at six pm. Then at six pm
• 7:50
  we're having a free concert in downtown Windsor where we just announced the lineup.
• 7:55
  It's happening between the Park and o Lett Streets, right onton Corn front of
• 8:00
  Lefty Street House and where Beatles Banquet Center is. And our lineup includes the
• 8:05
  amazing Jody Raffool, a local, great, local, brand new rock band
• 8:09
  that's hitting the streets. It's been really popular, Hutch and then we're bringing
• 8:13
  some Detroit flavor over the border because we're really going to showcase our partnership between
• 8:18
  Windsor and Detroit. We have Daniel Heckx, we have Nissan, who is
• 8:24
  who from D twelve Son who's like the biggest upcoming rapper in the city of
• 8:28
  Detroit. And then of course we have the legendary Shady Records, Eminem's tag
• 8:33
  team partner with Bad versus Evil, the huge artist who's been here before,
• 8:39
  who's happy to come back and host and do some thirty five minutes performance with
• 8:43
  those guys. Royce the five to nine is going to be here as well.
• 8:46
  So we've got a great events happening on Saturday night, Aprils the twenty
• 8:48
  seventh. It's free. We just ask people to register online at www dot
• 8:54
  Downtown Windsor dot CA. It's going to be a full day of festivities celebrating
• 8:58
  the weekend festivities that are happy. Name is Toned Detroit and we're so happy
• 9:01
  to be partnering with the NFL and them and all of our great sponsors to
• 9:03
  make this avouent happy