A business owner posted a sign above a shattered storefront display window with a message to the people who did it.
It reads: "To the loser & your girlfriend who SHOT My window: The POLICE now have the video of you doing it!"
Brooke Floyd, the owner of In Again Fashions on West 4th Avenue in Vancouver, came into work on April 5 to find a huge crack in the store window. She didn't check security camera footage until two days later to see what exactly happened.
"At five o'clock in the morning, when it was pitch black out, two individuals came up to the store window and tried to break it. They were hooded [and had] very recognizable jackets and backpacks," Floyd tells Vancouver Is Awesome over the phone.
She adds that the duo came back two hours later. "It was a man and a woman and it looked like he was trying to get back through the window, and when that didn't work, he reached into her purse, pulled out a gun and fired it at the window."
Constable Tania Visintin confirmed that the Vancouver Police Department is currently investigating the "attempted break and enter to the store."
Floyd says it's not uncommon for her to call for help, but it is uncommon for her to get a response. "It would be great if there was a bigger police presence. I constantly have shoplifters. I had an incident not that long ago with a shoplifter. I ran after him, got into an altercation on the street with him and called 911 and it took them two and a half hours to respond even though I was physically assaulted," she says.
"It just feels like [the police are] not doing enough about the situation," she adds. From Floyd's experience, every report has to be done online, and even then she rarely gets a response. When they do respond, Floyd continues, "then you get to actually see an actual police officer and they usually ask for the information. And then you never ever hear back from them again."
Floyd shares that criminal activity on West 4th is an ongoing problem for other businesses too. "This is the second time this has happened in a matter of months. Last time it was broken out and we were robbed. Patagonia just up street, their windows are always boarded up," she says, including Lululemon in the list.
Shoplifting and violence happen so often that Floyd tells her young employees to not do anything. "You don't know if you're gonna get punched in the face," she adds.
"It's frustrating," she says. "I'm a small business owner. I don't have glass insurance. COVID hit us really hard. So here we are just struggling to get back on our feet again and pay bills that have piled up. Now I have to pay a couple grand for a new window."
