Westmount Foods owner concerned by escalation in thefts and violence at store

Jamal Uddin says he's watched surveillance video footage of thieves trashing his Saskatoon store during break-ins three times since last summer.

On Saturday, he experienced it in real time.

The time code on the tape reads 5:38 p.m. CST and Uddin is working behind the counter at Westmount Foods on 29th Street W., serving a customer, when a man wearing a mask and carrying a gym bag and baseball bat strides into the store.

Over the next couple of minutes, the thief comes behind the counter to threaten Uddin, terrorizes the three customers in the store, smashes racks of merchandise and demands Uddin stuff cigarettes and cash into the gym bag.

"He took cigarettes, chips and some candy, and he also tried to come and hit me. I was so scared," said Uddin.

Uddin took over the store in 2016 after moving to Saskatoon from Bangladesh in 2013. The store was robbed under a previous owner four times in four months in 2016.

The store was burglarized twice in the summer of 2018, prompting Uddin to upgrade his complement of security cameras to 16.

The cameras haven't deterred the thieves.

Footage captured four burglars in August staking out the store in the middle of the night before throwing a rock through the plate glass window and then boosting the smallest member of the crew over the metal security grate and into the store.

"I know that Canada is a peaceful country, people live here so peacefully, they do their business easily," he said, adding that he was nevertheless robbed four times in the last year.

"So I gave all documents and all video [to the police] but I never heard anybody got caught."

It's cold comfort to Uddin that armed robberies and non-residential break-ins are both down across the city compared with the same period last year.

He says that he'd like to see more a visible police presence in his neighbourhood, especially with winter coming. Uddin is concerned that there will be fewer people out when the weather turns, but that many will have their faces covered.

"I don't know what I can do."