Ahead of his retirement after 10 years as Vancouver’s top cop, Chief Const. Adam Palmer says a holistic approach is needed — along with bail reform and mandatory, compassionate treatment — to improve the public safety situation in the city’s Downtown Eastside.
The low-income neighbourhood is home to approximately three per cent of Vancouver’s population but is responsible for about one-third of the city’s violent crime.
When Palmer started with the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) in 1987, he spent his first 13 years on patrol in East Vancouver.
“A lot of things have changed during that time,” he told Global News in an interview.
Palmer said one of the biggest wholesale changes was deinstitutionalization.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, people with severe mental health issues were released from hospitals like the now-closed Riverview facility in Coquitlam, in favour of community-based care.
“That all made sense, like, that sounded like a good plan,” said Palmer. “The reality is that’s not what happened.”
Community supports were not in place, the VPD Chief Constable said, and vulnerable individuals ended up untreated on the streets, including in the Downtown Eastside, where many were preyed upon and introduced to drugs.
With crack cocaine and later fentanyl taking its toll on the area’s residents, Vancouver police commissioned a social impact audit in 2022, focusing on the flow of money to the Downtown Eastside with little to no accountability.
The confidential report suggested more than $5 billion is being spent every year on the city’s social safety net, despite worsening results.
“Boy did we ever get heck on that one,” recalled Palmer. “There was a lot of negative media coverage on it, but sometimes the facts hurt, and the reality is there’s a lot of money in the system as a whole, but it’s not being spent effectively, in my view.”
Better coordination between all three levels of government and social service providers is one of three things Palmer said would be a game-changer.
To ensure a proper return on investment, Palmer believes a government entity should take charge of the Downtown Eastside to coordinate the delivery of housing, health care, social and addiction services.
“You’ve heard the term czar before, that kind of thing, but somebody that has responsibility for one of the most troubled neighbourhoods in Canada, and we’ll do our part as police, but we need other people to step up in a coordinated manner,” he said.
In November 2022, then-incoming B.C. premier David Eby said the problems in the community were the worst he’d ever seen, and promised the province would take over running a coordinated approach to address issues that had become too big for the City of Vancouver to manage alone.
At the time, Eby explained that a “bottom line” approach meant the province would take on the role of coordinating the services and measuring the outcomes.
Palmer also said bail reform is needed to keep dangerous individuals in custody while awaiting trial, and a tighter application of the law to ensure people get proper sentences.
A Global News archive story on the Downtown Eastside from August 1989 featured a VPD officer commenting that “faster than we can get the paperwork done and process these people, they’re back on the streets committing the same offences that they were arrested for just a few hours before.”
Nearly four decades later, Palmer said police chiefs across the country are still challenged by the revolving door of justice.
“People deserve a second chance and that kind of stuff, I think our justice system is kind of set up that way,” Palmer told Global News.
“Our justice system shouldn’t be set up in a way that you know, somebody gets 40 or 50 or 60 or 100 chances, and we know that there’s chronic repeat offending, victimizing people.”
Finally, the outgoing VPD chief believes mandatory, secure, compassionate care is required for a small percentage of people who are chronically dangerous to themselves and others.
“It’s untenable the way the situation is right now,” Palmer said.
“The irony is we know who they are, we know who many of these people are that are severely mentally ill and addicted that continually commit crime, but they just keep getting put back out on the street, and that’s not a good model. They need help.”