Safety Programs

Night-Time Security Program

The DNBIA has organized a Night-Time security program, funded by a wide-range of downtown businesses. The program enables professional security staff to circulate throughout Downtown Nanaimo during night-time hours to protect downtown properties. While our paid security staff provide door-check and alarm-response services to member businesses, they also provide security for every business in the downtown area, merely by their presence. Night-Time Security patrollers respond to every observed security challenge, and this program has made downtown Nanaimo a safer place - 24/7.

Bar Watch

As part of the Safer Nanaimo initiative, the RCMP, the City of Nanaimo, and the DNBIA has initiated the Bar Watch program to ensure that bar patrons and bar operators enjoy safe operations. The basic premise of the Bar Watch program is simple—every bar in the program keeps the same rules. Get 86’d from one bar—you’re banned from all of the Bar Watch members.

The key to making the system work is the Treoscope system—a technology that temporarily records information from each patron's ID. Through the Treoscope, bar owners know that every patron in their building is of-age, and that they haven’t been banned by another Bar Watch member. The next day, the Treoscope system forgets everything and starts over. (We should all be so lucky.)