The VPD goes rogue, ignores city council with new poorbashing unit

November 12 2020

Earlier this week, the Vancouver Police Department announced the creation of a new unit to respond to “low-level crime and street disorder.” According to the VPD, this unit will be to “deal with . . . the person that's using drugs in the park, like the person that may be sleeping in your doorway.” This announcement is a blatant disregard for City Council’s motion, passed this July, to “de-prioritize policing as a response to mental health, sex work, homelessness, and substance use and to prioritize funding community-led harm reduction and safety initiatives in these areas.” In a similar dismissal of the priorities and authority of City Council, the Vancouver Police Board in June refused Council's request to make a one percent budget cut.

The VPD’s new unit will act on impulses that are anti-poor person, anti-Indigenous, anti-homeless, anti-substance user, anti-sex worker, and otherwise repressive. This expansion of policing is an expression of the cruel reality of policing as an expression of state violence that serves to reinforce oppressive ideologies and to entrench economic and political disenfranchisement.

Vancouver City Council has the power to refuse to increase, or to cut, the VPD’s budget. It should exercise that power. This would be a short-term solution, and the first step to defunding the police. City Council should construct a City budget that de-prioritizes policing. The Ottawa Alternative Budget, drafted by the Ottawa Coalition for a People’s Budget, offers one possible way forward. The Calgary Police Commission has proposed a $40M budget reduction in 2021 for the Calgary Police Services, including a $10M crisis response reallocation.

The VPD state that their new unit is a response to a recent survey (commissioned by the VPD) that suggests Vancouverites are concerned about crime in the city. While this survey is transparently self-serving for the VPD, we do not wish to discredit these concerns - those feelings and fears are real, even if they may be based on prejudices. 

As the Council motion correctly spells out, more policing is not the answer to problems rooted in inequality. Alternatives to policing and to the criminalization of poverty are possible and necessary. We must fund adequate housing, provide basic necessities, and support substance users through recovery or management. Education is key to help our neighbours remove prejudices and learn different approaches to community issues. More broadly, our society should radically rethink how we choose to treat those who cause harm to others. We must move past violent responses and towards compassionate solutions of partnership and care.

Students at the UBC Social Justice Centre are mobilizing to make sure City Council’s democratic decision is not overridden by the VPD and right-wing political forces in Vancouver. Check out their call to action.