Vancouver police give second update on task force ‘barraging’ Downtown Eastside

Vancouver police say violence and street crimes in the Downtown Eastside have continued to decline since it launched a specialized task force months ago.

Mayor Ken Sim and the Vancouver Police Department launched ‘Task Force Barrage’ on Feb. 13, with a purported focus on targeting organized crime, violent offenders, and street disorder.

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Since it launched, the VPD boasts that it has completed an average of five arrests per day and seized hundreds of weapons.

It says 79 guns, only 14 of which were real, have been seized — among 745 weapons seized in total.

Speaking to media Thursday morning, Sgt. Steve Addison says reported violent crime is down 13 per cent since implementing the task force.

He says property crime reports have increased 17 per cent, which is the result of more attention paid by police to retailers in the area.

Local business groups say they have noticed a difference in and around the Downtown Eastside.

“People feel safer,” said Walley Wargolet, executive director of the Gastown Business Improvement Association.

“There’s just a vibrancy shift and change. When folks know that there’s an effort being made, change is happening, you just get more people coming down to the area and the vibrance increases, which then just makes everything feel safer.”

Business owners in Chinatown say they’re feeling it as well.

“Now, actually, is a little bit better,” said Syrus Lee of the Chinatown BIA.

Lee adds there are still issues around mental health and drug usage that are also affecting safety.

Harm reduction and recovery advocate Guy Felicella says that despite the appearance of positive statistics, the task force amounts to “putting a band-aid on a bullet wound.”

He says police have had a major presence in the neighbourhood for years, and with more officers comes the increase of possible wrongful arrests and dispersal.

“When I’m down there, outreaching, when I see the police walking the street, I just see everybody walk away around the block,” explained Felicella. “

“It’s very familiar. When I was down there struggling, when the police would walk by, we would just walk away and go around the block, come back. They would play this cat-and-mouse game.”

Addison admitted that the increased police presence might have an impact on surrounding neighbourhoods.

“Gastown, Chinatown, the western part of Strathcona and parts of the downtown core. We’re paying very close attention to that, and we have deployed additional officers to some of those areas in anticipation that there could be some fallout from our enforcement action in the Downtown Eastside.”

Felicella says innocent people who feel they might be profiled by police are likely to migrate to other parts of the city, pushing them farther from the resources available in the Downtown Eastside.

Addison repeated that the VPD’s goal is not to target “legitimate residents” but rather organized criminals and violent offenders.

Felicella says he’s dubious about every officer’s ability to differentiate between the two.

“I think when you have new recruits down there that know they could target anybody, maybe who is yelling and not bothering anybody, but just not having a good day or something and get pulled over because of it,” said Felicella.

Addison says the $5 million the City of Vancouver budgeted to support the task force is expected to sustain it for six months.

He says progress has been made, but the police department has its “finger in a leaky dam” and will be in discussions to continue ‘Task Force Barrage’ or a similar effort when the funding runs out.

Addison says the task force helps deploy more officers to the neighbourhood at a time, but the increase is comprised of many officers working overtime, and numbers have been inconsistent.

“But overall it’s been a significant increase. All you have to do is go down and walk around and see that there’s extra police officers out there,” he said.

Felicella says the most useful officer in the Downtown Eastside is not necessarily an officer working overtime, but one who has been properly trained to interact with the community.

“It all kind of stems back to unmet needs: homelessness, poverty, unhoused, sleep deprivation, drug use. When you consider all those factors, out of desperation, I think it can be a recipe for disaster for somebody else… The healthiest and safest communities are the ones met with the best resources, not the most police. It doesn’t change those underlying issues.”

If Mayor Sim wanted to take effective action on changing the neighbourhood, Felicella says the budget for ‘Task Force Barrage’ would have been better cut in half.

“Maybe do $2.5 million and put $2.5 million into some resources in the Downtown Eastside,” he said.

“If there was a resource centre or something that people could access with that kind of money and show up at a facility — that would go a lot farther for the people down there, instead of just all that going into the law enforcement side.”

The operation is set to wrap in three months, but police say they’re talking with city officials about how to extend the successes they’ve had here once it’s over.

Not all of that is in the police’s hands; they say for a long-term solution, the government needs to do more work on mental health, housing, and addiction.

— With files from Jack Morse.