Weekend smash-and-grab by butter tart bandit puts spotlight on downtown security

It could possibly be the sweetest haul a smash-and-grab has ever produced in the Sault.

The Queen’s Tarts was broken into in the early hours of Sunday morning, leaving behind a bunch of busted glass — a result of the front door being smashed in with an unidentified blunt object in order to gain entry to the Queen Street East bakery —  and several empty trays in the large display case where a number of tarts once sat.

While there have been offers from neighbouring businesses to supply the owners with security camera footage, there has so far been no definitive trail of crumbs leading to the butter tart bandit.    

“That’s basically all they did,” said Aaron Craig, who owns and operates The Queen’s Tarts alongside his wife, Tammy Paterson. “They took a couple of dozen butter tarts, and about $8 out of the tip jar.”

The owners of The Queen’s Tarts have a good rapport with several people downtown, and are known to hand out some of their baked goods for free if someone downtown is in need and they have something extra to spare. “They know to come in and ask for stuff,” Paterson said. 

“We will continue to do that — we won’t let this stop us from helping out the community,” Craig added. “Honestly, it was one person. We don’t want to make it sound like the community is horrible because one person did something bad.”

But the recent break-in at The Queen’s Tarts isn’t the first time a business in the Sault’s downtown has been the target of crime this year. In February, Case’s Music was broken into overnight, resulting in three guitars with hefty price tags being taken from the business. As previously reported by SooToday, some downtown storefronts have resorted to locking up and asking customers to ring the doorbell for entry — in broad daylight during regular business hours. 

“I’m very much concerned with the direction that things are going,” said Nicholas Rosset, who chairs both the Downtown Association in Sault Ste. Marie and its safety and security subcommittee. “With the weather getting more mild, we do tend to see more activity — that’s kind of statistically the way we see it every year. However, it’s certainly concerning. This year seems to be…more than we want to see.” 

As SooToday first reported, a planned $6,000 expenditure for private security patrols was removed from the Downtown Association's proposed 2024 budget due to the fact that police are working to establish a downtown precinct as early as this year. Rosset says the association has been in contact with Sault Ste. Marie Police Service with respect to its plans for the forthcoming downtown precinct and “their presence in the area” in general. 

Rosset points to the 44-bed men’s shelter at the former Sacred Heart school, the Downtown Ambassadors Program and the homelessness prevention team that's administered by social services as positive developments for the downtown core over the years.  

“They’re having some positive effect, but still more needs to be done,” he said. “That’s where we’re trying to fill gaps and see what more can be done efficiently.”  

The Downtown Association recently issued a survey to membership in order to start gathering its own data on crime that’s taken place downtown since the beginning of 2024. “We’re trying to put together some data to help us with advocacy and applying for some grants — there might be some opportunity to get some more security for the downtown,” said Rosset. “It’s definitely something the Downtown Association is actively working on.”

As it turns out, the Downtown Association so far hasn’t been able to coax Sault Police into providing statistics on crime in the downtown area, which impacts its ability to procure grants for additional security services.     

“We’re having a little bit of difficulty when we don’t have some data behind what our requests are asking to tackle, so that’s part of it,” Rosset said.

The Downtown Association also wants to obtain detailed incident reports from police going forward, much like the incident reports it obtained while employing private security firms to provide patrols downtown. “We’re certainly going to request it — whether or not we’re going to be provided with that, that will be up to them,” Rosset said. 

Messages left by SooToday with Sault Ste. Marie Police Service requesting comment have not been returned. 

The entrepreneurs behind The Queen’s Tarts, meanwhile, aren’t sounding the alarm over crime in the Sault’s downtown just yet. 

“This is our first incident, we’ve never had anything remotely like this happen before,” Craig said. “I did invest in some security cameras now so that if something ever does happen again, we at least have a little bit of footage of it. We don’t feel unsafe.”

- with files from David Helwig