Filled with fear: Stoneville, Port Albert looking for help with disturbances, crime

The quiet, peaceful communities of Stoneville and Port Albert are being challenged by petty crime, and people have had enough, residents of the central Newfoundland outports say.

People who've lived there for years tell CBC News they want the police to up enforcement, and the justice system to help them restore the way of life the tiny Notre Dame Bay communities had known for decades.

"You don't know when you wake up in the morning if something's broken into or if something's vandalized or if someone's hurt or what the case happened overnight," said Geoffrey Hodder, a lifelong resident of Stoneville.

"Every morning is just that fear of what you'll hear today."

The fear has blanketed the communities. CBC News spoke to over a dozen people in Stoneville, many of whom described how houses, cabins and the local church are being broken into.

They told CBC News how outboard motors are disappearing from boats, and a private safe was stripped from a home and damaged beyond repair. Women whose husbands work on a rotation are scared to sleep in their own homes, afraid of what might happen to their children. Alleged drug deals keep the neighbourhood awake in the early morning hours. Seniors have strategically placed baseball bats throughout their homes — just in case. 

"I will always love Stoneville," Hodder said.

"I've lived here my whole whole life. I plan on living here till the day I die. I have a really strong attachment to it. I'll, you know, deal with the crime if I got to the best I can — I don't think that they're going to intimidate me to the point where I would want to leave. That's not who I am. I'm not one to buckle to that kind of thing, but, it has sort of took the enjoyment out of just being out and about, for sure."

Other communities in the province are dealing with similar social problems. Recently, the town of Robinson's Bight faced a weekend shooting that saw stray bullets hit homes, and the town of Bay Roberts was shaken by the discovery of human remains inside a burning vehicle.

Hodder recently attended a public meeting held in Stoneville to address the disturbances in town. What he heard from the RCMP officers in attendance, however, brought him little comfort.

"I walked away with less contentment than I had going there," he said. "They didn't give me a peace of mind that we were going to be safe or we were going to be taken care of. It was more of a letdown than it was anything uplifting about it."

It's not a simple case of him wanting to see those causing the disturbances to be locked up and removed from the community. Hodder is empathetic.

"The system should be there to help these people because at the end of the day, I feel sorry — I know all these people personally and, you know, I do have a soft spot for them in the sense that I feel bad for them," he said.

"But the system isn't doing them any favours by bringing them in and letting them go. You know, they need to be able to get on the right track in life ... our justice system should be in place to help these people. And putting them back out on the streets doesn't do them any favours."