TRANSCRIPT:
Host (Rob Fai):
It’s what’s happening right now. This is The Jazz Johal Show on 980 CKNW. Rob Fai for Jazz here on a Friday afternoon. I hope wherever I find you, I find you well. Hopefully not gridlocked in traffic, as we’ve been trying to tell you over the course of the last couple of days to avoid the downtown core if at all possible because of everything that is going on.
On a more serious note, Vancouver is definitely at a crossroads when it comes to public safety, facing a troubling mix of rising street crime, random assaults, and persistent challenges all around us. City Hall and community police are responding with measures like increased patrols and funding for mental health and addiction services. But is that enough? I feel like we’ve got a lot that we can uncover here.
Before we get to our next guest, I want to play a little audio from Steve Addison, media liaison officer with the VPD. He was on Jazz’s show yesterday, and this is what he had to say about some of the challenges they’re dealing with:
Steve Addison (Audio Clip):
“The biggest challenge we have with these unprovoked stranger attacks that seemingly come out of nowhere is knowing when they’re going to occur. But time and time again, we’re seeing untreated mental health issues and serious substance use disorders—often a combination of the two—as the driving factors, and those need to be dealt with.”
Host (Rob Fai):
That’s the VPD’s perspective. I want to get it from a former federal Crown prosecutor, Rob Dhanu, who’s kind enough to join me. Rob, good afternoon.
Rob Dhanu:
Good afternoon and happy Friday, Rob.
Host (Rob Fai):
Well, happy Friday right back at you. Let’s get into it. Is this a case of us chasing our tails when it comes to law and policy, and not being able to really catch up with crime in our city?
Rob Dhanu:
It’s an extremely complicated and multi-layered issue. Let’s see if we can solve it in the next few minutes here, Rob. Let’s back up a bit and get some context first and start with the good news.
Memories are short, so it may not seem like it, but crime is actually down since the 1990s in Canada. We’re actually down about 25% since that time period. More good news: Canada’s still a lot better than the US. We’re a little bit worse than Europe. And further good news: BC is third best in Canada. So that’s a little bit of context.
Now, the bad news is that violent crime has been increasing since about 2015—so about a decade here. And although we’re still lower than about 20 years ago, when we look at our streets and the feeling we get, it certainly feels more dangerous.
Being inside the system, when I try to think critically about this, for me, the starting point is the realization that our leaders, unfortunately, both on the left and the right, are treating crime as a political game. Rather than being given long-term solutions, which are complicated, we’re being given catchy soundbites essentially in terms of earning political points.
Host (Rob Fai):
The politicizing of the crime is obviously a thing. But one of the other challenges that I face–and I was talking with a lawyer just the other day, and he says, you know one one entity that doesn’t really get talked about a lot is the judges and the higher you know parts of our, I guess you would say, criminal justice system. Do they realize–and again, I don’t want to put words in a judge’s mouth here–but do they realize what’s actually going out on the streets? Because it somewhat suggests that maybe there’s a disconnect.
Rob Dhanu:
No, judges absolutely realize. They are in the heart of the system and see what’s going on in their courts and communities every day. They’re very cognizant because they want to maintain the repute of the justice system.
Here’s the issue in terms of the justice system: What I’ve seen from the Crown side and the defense side is that there’s a lot of people working. The police are doing their job, the Crown are doing their job, the judges are doing their job. But no one is really talking to each other. So what happens is that the police will arrest somebody, then hand off that person to the Crown, and that’s it. They’re out of the system until and if it goes to court.
What we need is follow-through. The left hand needs to know what the right hand is doing. Police need to be talking to the Crown about how they know this offender—they’re in the trenches and have encountered this person multiple times. Those lines of communication need to be open and continue to be open.
Crown that needs to talk to Community Corrections. They have to be talking to probation services who are in their own silo doing their own thing. They have to be talking to the jail system. So when this person is in custody, are they getting the treatment that they need based upon all this information that the police and the Crown now have and then there needs to be follow through when they’re released back into the community. So what we’re having now is a lot of disconnect between the different parties that are in the system.
Host (Rob Fai):
Why is there a disconnect? I was just talking with someone from the Surrey Police Service the other day, and he brought up something that maybe works with this as well. He says that what they have digitally and what the RCMP have, they’ve still got to amalgamate, they’ve still got to, you know, link those two together. And I was kind of surprised that even now they’re up and running that is still a process that’s ongoing. Is this a problem here in the fact that all of these databases don’t link together?
Rob Dhanu:
It’s a huge problem. We are in the information and social media age, on the cusp of artificial intelligence, but the government is still behind the ball in this area. So government is government. Government is not going to be a small business, it’s not going to be Silicon Valley. But the government needs to adopt a lot of the approaches we see in high tech startups by utilizing these technologies so that we’re sharing information.
You know, this is what every single private business is doing out there and the government needs to get on board. What Canada is terrible at is collecting statistics. The US is way better. So if we don’t understand what the stats are, we will not know how to deal with the issue.
Host (Rob Fai):
So while we’re all trying to figure out what the other hand is saying to the other hand, there’s a person that’s out on bail or maybe didn’t even have the charges were stayed or what have you. And they’re going out and they’re recommitting crimes and the public’s in an uproar because they’re like, you guys have had this guy in custody 10 times. He’s out for his 11th and you guys still aren’t talking to each other. Am I reading that right?
Rob Dhanu:
Absolutely. I look at the Downtown Eastside, for example. The Downtown Eastside attracts people from across Canada. If we actually devote some resources to cataloging who’s in the Downtown Eastside, where they came from, what their family background is, what resources they have in the community. Many of these individuals are unfortunately indigenous because of Canada’s colonial legacy. We can then start monitoring and trying to assist these people on a deeper, much more fundamental level.
Rather, what we’re doing is we keep pouring money into reactive policing, sending more and more police on patrol to react to crime. You know, VPD’s budget is 20% of Vancouver City’s entire budget. Same with APD in Abbotsford. Those are massive budgets. We need to take that money and reallocate it in a much more smart manner.
Host (Rob Fai):
And tech would probably be a good place to start, no?
Rob Dhanu:
Huge, great place to start. And if you do it properly, it’s actually a very cheap way to start. So you can use tech and you can use that technology and multiply that technology in ways that really in terms of what we have now is quite unimaginable.
Host (Rob Fai):
Interesting. Interesting to get your perspective on this, Rob. I know you got a significant background in this, so I’m going to open up the phones on the other side of the break. But your expertise, I do appreciate.
Rob Dhanu:
My pleasure.
Host (Rob Fai):
All right. Rob Dhanu is a former federal Crown prosecutor that takes us to the break. Let’s hear from you on this. As Vancouver continues to face these rising concerns, I mean, we’re talking violence and public safety. It’s clear that the solutions need to come from all corners of the community.
As you just heard from Rob, what do you think will help make our streets safer? Is it more police presence? Is it better? Is it better mental health support? Is it more technology? Is it making sure that everybody can at least speak to each other?
I would love for you to weigh in on this and how we can move forward together and create a safer city for everybody. Your thoughts? at 604-280-9898. Let’s get into them next.
Host (Rob Fai):
You’re listening to the Jazz Joe Hall Show on 980 CKNW. 17 minutes after four, Rob Fai filling in for jazz. And boy, did we hit the nail on the head here. It opens up the phones at 604-280-9898.
We just had Rob to new on. He’s a former federal Crown prosecutor and we’re talking about the fact that all of these different–I guess you would say entities out there, the police, the judicial system. They don’t talk to each other. There’s no connect. So everybody’s got a piece of the puzzle, but nobody’s brought it together. And meanwhile, we’re letting potential criminals back onto the streets.
Let’s go to the phones. We’ll start with Sean in North Vancouver. Sean, good afternoon. Your thoughts on hearing Rob’s thoughts.
Sean (Police Officer):
Hey Rob, you know, I’m a police officer for the last 25 years. Our system is designed around deterrence. Bad guys, criminals are afraid of the police and they’re afraid of judge and jury and then society’s all nice and friendly.
Well, except for it’s not true, and I don’t know that it’s ever worked. But for the last number of years, our government, municipal, provincial and federal are unwilling or unable–doesn’t really matter which–to address their core mandate, which is public safety. So we can wait for our different levels of government to get their stuff sorted out, but community safety, and that’s that’s what we’re talking about, community safety, to get effective and enduring community safety, you need two essential pillars or cornerstones. You need public safety, the role of government and their agencies of which I’m a part, and you need personal safety, and we don’t have the personal safety component in this country.
No one talks about it, not the police, not the media, not not our elected officials. So it’s no surprise that community safety across the country is tanking. We’re missing fully half of what we require for enduring and effective community safety.
Host (Rob Fai):
All right, Sean, thanks for the call and I appreciate that and also appreciate you disclosing that you are a police officer. We’ll get through these calls. I’ve got some thoughts on this as well, but I want to hear yours. William in Delta, you’re next up. Rob Dhanu painted a pretty vivid picture. What’d you make of the conversation? Hi, William. Have I gotcha?
William:
Yeah, you do. Sorry. I thought you were still talking to the other guy. Yeah, my core thing, I don’t know if you’re either a police officer or even a store store owner, a rich man or a criminal that is homeless. You know what I mean? You have to have value.
You have to treat people with value. Sometimes the police don’t treat the criminals with value. The criminals definitely don’t treat the police with any value. As that fellow that had that incident happen to him, he had no value to anybody else that he was there doing. And then that subsequently went wrong. And it showed that the police didn’t show that much value. They had a guy with a four-inch knife on the ground, four people pointing guns at him, they didn’t need to shoot him. They were already there. They combined them, but they show no value. You know what I mean?
So it comes down to value and people gotta start realizing that these people need help and they also need not just help, but they need to be shown some value.
Host (Rob Fai):
All right, William, thank you. Thank you for the call. If I didn’t have more calls, I’d let you run a little bit longer on that. You know, that’s an interesting one. I think that takes us down a different fork the road for a different segment at a different time.
For me right now, what it comes down to, and this is what I want to try to keep the conversation focused on, is the fact that we’ve got these different governing bodies and policing bodies, but they’re just not speaking to each other. And we’ve heard this now from multiple people. And the problem is we call those the proverbial cracks. And, you know, we have these criminals and these people, value or no value, that are. through these cracks, going back out into society and continuing to commit crimes.
And the public’s frustration comes in the fact that it’s like, listen, you’ve had this person in custody a dozen times, 20 times, 30 times. Why is this person still out on the streets? And the problem is every governing body or entity here has a piece to the puzzle. But if there isn’t the tech that connects all these people so that they can get the proper analytic, the proper data, the proper information and background to make sure that they can incarcerate or at least treat this person accurately, then I think you’re really just spinning your tires in the mud.
All right, out to Coquitlam we go. Tom, thank you for waiting while I have my opinion. What’s yours?
Tom:
Well, it’s funny that guy was talking about value and I do see that conversation because If in the history of Vancouver and that if 50 children went missing, do you think it would go after two? No, but because they were prostitutes, there was no value to them. And you talk about communication, that’s no, there was no communication of that system. But what I want to talk about or mention is please remember everybody hates Gordon Campbell. I mean Glen Clark because of the ferries, but Gordon Campbell did 1000 things worse and one of the things he did was right away shut down Riverview. And look how far, it’s never going to be able to come back. There’s never going to be any funding to make what Riverview had what it was and what it was when in the 70s and 80s and the you know early 90s. So there’s no way to go back to that because there’s just no way to fund that for that.
Host (Rob Fai):
Tom, I see where you’re going with that. I think you make some interesting points. I don’t think there will be another Riverview to be honest with you and that’s just not a political speak. I think there’s a lot of money that needs to be allocated for that. I don’t know if that’s where they’re going to go with it.
But again, keeping the topic on point here is you have the police, you have the criminal system like the judges and the lawyers and the prosecutors. They’ve all got different pieces of information that can give the general public more peace if they can bring it all together and they just don’t seem to be collaborating and communicating the way that we as a general public, the tax-paying citizens of this province, need them to collaborate with. So that’s maybe where some of this money should be allocated to instead of just you know shipping them out to POCO. All right, Steven in Burnaby, you’re my final call. I’ve got all the runway that you need. What do you got for me?
Steven:
Thanks for having me on, Rob. Yeah, I’d just like to say that, with all due respect to your last guest, I just heard a lot of excuses there. It’s your job to put them in jail. If you have somebody that has had 12 arrests and they’re in front of the judge, it only takes a piece of paper to look at.
You know, when police used to make an arrest, people used to celebrate. Now I just roll my eyes and go, oh, he’ll be out in an hour or be out in the same day. I’ve had several police officer friends and they’ve arrested the same person on the same day several times. And we don’t need technology to solve this. Paper, paper can do this in the meantime.
So with all due respect to him, that’s a lot of excuses. Everybody needs to do their job and get this done.
Host (Rob Fai):
All right, Stephen, appreciate the call. Here’s one thing. The only thing that frustrates me on this, and I have Full disclosure. My father is a defense attorney. My brother’s about to be. I have an uncle who’s a longtime member of the VPD. So trust me, Christmas dinner. My family used to be awesome.
But one of the things that for me personally, if I take all of that out of the equation, the only thing that I can’t stand is when I see charges that are stayed due to the length, the fact that they didn’t get before council, the fact that they didn’t get the process and it just all of a sudden took too long and so they release or they drop the charges. That for me is of all the things. You’ve got to be able to process the charges and the fact that they don’t for me is the one thing that makes my head spin. We’ve got to find a way to get our system moving and again, communicate better.
But again, hit me up on the buzz line, 604-331-2899. I would love to hear from you and we’ll keep this conversation going.
