Crime-fighters seek seats on city council

Two candidates running for Vancouver city council have some unique insights and expertise on policing and crime, which have emerged as significant municipal election campaign issues.

One is a former Vancouver cop, the other a senior crime analyst for the Vancouver Police Department (VPD).

Brian Montague, a 28-year veteran of the VPD, is running for council under the ABC Vancouver slate.

Arezo Zarrabian, a crime analyst whose focus in recent years has been Vancouver’s city core, is running for the Non Partisan Association.

While they are running on different slates, they agree on a few things: Crime and disorder in downtown Vancouver have spiked in the last couple of years; police are not adequately funded; a housing-first policy that isn’t properly backed with wrap-around supports doesn’t work; and the courts are failing to protect citizens from prolific repeat offenders.

Zarrabian was the VPD analyst who identified a new trend emerging in the fall of 2020 that came to be known as stranger assaults: Violent, unprovoked assaults in which the perpetrator doesn’t know the victim and where robbery isn’t a motive.

“We saw a huge trend, starting after [fall] 2020, in violent shopliftings as well,” she said. “It was an organized shoplifting, similar to what we’ve seen in San Francisco, Seattle. It’s almost like they have a list. They’ll walk into the Lululemon (Nasdaq:LULU) and they’ll take $1,000 of merchandise. The weapons usage has increased, too, in the last two years in the downtown core.”

Citing recent VPD crime statistics, Zarrabian said assaults were up 20% in July, compared to July 2021, robberies up 56% and sexual assault up 13%.

“We have seen double-digit increases from 2021,” she said.

Part of the problem may be a lack of front-line police officers.

“Our authorized strength at the Vancouver Police Department has not moved since 2009 … whereas our (population) density has increased significantly since 2009,” Zarrabian said. “We were operating at minimum for certain shifts. We didn’t have the strength of having full teams out around the city, and this does play into this greater picture of the crime going up.”

Montague, who retired from the VPD four months ago, said police feel they do not have the backing of city hall. In some cases, police feel they are discouraged from doing their jobs, like evicting people from homeless encampments.

“The city has made it very clear that they don’t want that happening,” Montague said.

When police do make arrests, criminals are often sent right back onto the street to re- offend, either because prosecutors won’t prosecute or judges refuse to hand out jail sentences or order repeat offenders with drug addiction or mental health problems into supervised treatment.

Montague said the VDP identified 40 offenders involved in random stranger attacks.

“They looked at the background and found they were responsible for something … just a little shy of 4,000 police calls for service,” Montague said.¢ “I personally know an individual that has over 100 convictions and that continues to be arrested.¢

“If the city doesn’t want the police policing certain things, if the prosecution services won’t lay charges, why are the police wasting their resources?”¢

Zarrabian agreed that revolving-door justice is a problem.

She cited one case in which a repeat offender one morning caused $100,000 in damage, mostly broken windows, was arrested and released in the afternoon on a promise to appear.

“Within an hour of being released, he went to a different neighbourhood in the downtown core, and he did another $25,000 worth of damage,” Zarrabian said. “That’s one day. That’s not a policing issue – that is a court issue. That is the lack of having teeth in the justice system.”

Montague and Zarrabian both agree that enforcement alone won’t fix urban crime issues. They say municipal, provincial and federal governments have failed to provide the “wrap-around” services needed to deal with the mental illness and drug addiction that are so often behind criminal recidivism. The housing-first approach only works if all the other services needed are there.

“We need enforcement, and we need mental health facilities, and we need drug addiction treatment, and we need social and supportive housing,” Montague said. ¢“All that’s happening now is harm reduction.”¢

“There’s no point of giving housing to individuals that need complex care if you’re not going to give them the complex care in that housing unit,” Zarrabian said. “All you’re doing is creating a warehouse situation with individuals, and all that does is create more victimization with those units.”

She doesn’t buy the argument that those sorts of support services are mostly senior government purview and therefore beyond the scope of municipal councils.

“They have the ability to push the federal government for housing money,” she said. “So don’t tell me they don’t have the push to address the other issues that are just as important as housing.”