Vancouver city officials say a $5-million policing crackdown in the Downtown Eastside has produced a sharp drop in crime and calls for service, a claim met with praise and skepticism from those in the embattled neighbourhood.
Earlier this week, Mayor Ken Sim, Chief Constable Steve Rai and Fire Chief Karen Fry said the six-month enforcement blitz launched in February drove down robberies by 44 per cent, serious assaults by 23 per cent, violent crime by 18 per cent and structure fires by 30 per cent year-over-year during the enforcement period. Firefighter-attended overdose calls fell 36 per cent across the Downtown Eastside, Yaletown and Strathcona.
Mr. Sim and Chief Rai said the initiative, called Task Force Barrage, will now pivot from a temporary surge to a permanent program, adding a new police management structure and making the Downtown Eastside its own policing district.
ABC Councillor Lenny Zhou will also table a motion next month to launch VanStat, a performance management system to track data from multiple city departments, including police, fire, sanitation and housing, and allow for monthly reviews. If approved, it would be piloted in the West End, the downtown core, Strathcona and Mount Pleasant, the mayor said.
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Businesses in and around the Downtown Eastside praised the increased police presence for improving response times and a general sense of safety.
Jordan Eng, the president of the Vancouver Chinatown BIA, called the impact "significant," noting that there had been safety concerns for the many Chinese seniors who frequent the neighbourhood's shops and bakeries. He said he hopes the city builds on the program's success.
"In the past, we've seen all these pilot programs that last for three months and then run out of funding, and then the same old situation comes back," he said.
In Gastown, where the BIA has for years relied on private security to fill gaps in policing and city services, calls for the private service are down 28 per cent and shoplifting incidents have been halved, said Elise Yurkowski, the executive director of the Gastown Business Improvement Society.
However, "investment in mental health supports, overdose prevention, medical care and housing must go hand-in-hand with enforcement and justice reforms to achieve lasting, impactful community change," she said.
Clint Mahlman, the president and chief operating officer of London Drugs, said there has been a "measurable reduction in violence against employees, and some improvement in theft and vandalism" at the company's Gastown store, but customer traffic has not rebounded and crime is rising at other locations.
Vincent Kwan, the executive director of the Strathcona BIA, said that while the results are meaningful, petty crime persists. For this reason, he is most interested in the proposed VanStat program.
"It is an initiative that, if done right, could finally move us from piecemeal responses to a co-ordinated system where predictability, accountability and responsiveness are defined, measured and delivered," he said.
Katie Koncan, a spokesperson for First United, a church and social service provider in the area, said the $5-million would have been better spent supporting residents, many of whom resort to survival-based crime because they live in poverty.
She said her organization is also skeptical of the statistics, citing CTV News reporting that found the Vancouver Police Department engaged in a 2022 media strategy using an outdated statistic to highlight stranger assaults, aware of the public's "fear and anxiety," even as such attacks were declining.
The strategy coincided with a mayoral race in which Mr. Sim pledged to boost police funding - a promise he delivered on, having increased the budget by more than $80-million since taking office.
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COPE Councillor Sean Orr, who lives in Gastown, also questioned the statistics and noted that crime has fallen in many major cities across Canada. He said he was "shocked" by the effort to link increased policing with a decrease in overdoses.
Statistics Canada reported that overall crime fell 4 per cent in 2024 after three consecutive years of increases, with property crimes and drug offences falling 6 per cent.
Public Health Agency of Canada data show that B.C., Alberta and Ontario saw 12- to 37-per-cent decreases in opioid-related deaths in 2024, compared with 2023, a trend that has been attributed to increased education and changes in the illicit drug supply.
Recent drug-checking data has shown lower fentanyl concentrations in street drugs and more non-opioid sedatives - drugs that, while harmful, are not as acutely fatal as fentanyl alone.