Vancouver

Let's not spoil the experience for our tourist visitors    

The Mayor's moves against the police have a not-so-hidden agenda behind them  

by Reed Eurchuk  

In his most positive move since winning office, Mayor Sam Sullivan has tried to wrest some political control over the rogue Vancouver Police Department (VPD). With budgets that climb annually with little pretense to oversight, and with excessive political clout bestowed upon it thanks to a corporate press which constantly distorts the danger of crime to create a climate of fear even as crime rates plummet, the VPD has long been a power unto itself. Each election sees the NPA and most other municipal parties ritualistic chanting their allegiance to the bureaucratic behemoth that soaks up heaps of taxpayer money. Given the department's power, successive mayors have found it easiest to ingratiate themselves with the police chief of the day, which makes Sullivan's move all the more remarkable.

Sullivan has taken two actions of late that suggest he wants to reign in the department. First, he influenced three of the choices for appointment to the police board, rather than the stipulated single appointee. Previously the City had only a single appointee, as well as the Mayor, who traditionally sits as the chair of the Board and the province appointed the other five members. This has long been a bone of contention, as the City pays the bills, but has little control. According to Sean Condon in the West Ender, Sullivan "admit[s] to trying to exert control over the board" so he can pursue his agenda. Condon wrote that the Mayor said he needs "a cohesive board that . . . agrees to an agenda." Meanwhile, Sullivan "removed at least two members [Chief] Graham saw as allies" according to Courier columnist Allen Garr, and at the same time forwarded two new names presumably more to his liking: Pattie Marfleet and Glenn Wong. Removed was ex-NPA councilor Lynne Kennedy, who coincidentally was under criticism from within the NPA for her role as co-chair of the last NPA campaign.

Sullivan then exploited a bizarre incident in which the police chief left a bullet riddled police target silhouette on City Manager Judy Rogers's desk, with a cryptic note scrawled on it: "A bad day at the range is better than the best day at work." What Graham had in mind may never be known, but a number of journalists noted Rogers and Graham sit together on a senior management "team" at City Hall, and as City Manager Rogers has considerable sway over all City departments. Sullivan forwarded the matter to the Police Complaint Commissioner's office for review. In the end, the office dropped the matter, and Sullivan now says he regrets the "media spectacle."

But don't let Sullivan's remorse trick you. Sullivan has a history of pursuing his goals in a quiet and persistent manner. For example, consider his hard work against wards, and his methodical and successful climb to winning the NPA's nomination in the last election. Sullivan's "gosh, gee" manner, his boyish grin, and understated approach are misleading. If anyone can see this through, he can. Whether he is serious will become clear at the time of the next city budget.

Policing and "Disorder"

While I wish him luck in the above battle, Sullivan's own vision for the police leaves much to be desired. The Mayor told Sean Condon in the above mentioned article that one of his two biggest policing priorities is "to ensure that it focuses on street-level disorder." "Disorder" is a carefully chosen code word made popular in the 1980s in the US by criminologists and sociologists. "Disorder" refers not to serious criminal matters-assault, theft, fraud-but to quality of life issues such as panhandling, loitering, and public intoxication. The key text here is Broken Windows, an article written in 1982 by James Q Wilson and George Kelling. In that article the authors complained that traditional policing tends to lead us "to overlook . . . another source of fear-the fear of being bothered by disorderly people. Not violent people, nor, necessarily, criminals, but disreputable, or obstreperous, or unpredictable people, panhandlers, drunks, addicts . . . prostitutes, loiterers, the mentally ill." The authors argued that "disorder and crime are usually inextricably linked, in a kind of developmental sequence." And, of course, they wrote that, "social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken."

Wilson and Kelling's article came in a crucial historical context. First, a serious recession was then underway in the US, and second, a few select cities were at that time experiencing an initial bout of gentrification, as troops of young professionals decided to forgo child bearing and moved to previously working class areas of big cities (in New York, San Francisco and Boston, among other places). Increasing economic inequality coincided with booming urban real estate markets. In response, real estate developers, and their comrades in the entertainment, sports, restaurant and tourism industries, pressed for a "clean up" of city streets now full of the newly homeless, those dispossessed from their previous low-rent working class environs, and recently deinstitutionalized mental health patients.

Now flash forward 25 years and you see much the same social context in Vancouver. A heavily suburbanized downtown peninsula has little room for expansion except for eastward along Hastings, the east-side water front, and the flats along 1st avenue east of Main Street. Sullivan and his crew have ensured that the South East False Creek Flats will be another middle class suburb a la Coal Harbour and Yaletown, but the homeless persist in remaining downtown.

Sullivan's focus on disorder then plays to the tourism and real estate industries. West end provincial MLA Lorne Mayencourt's useless and reactionary "Safe Streets Act" (has anyone been prosecuted under this piece of crap?) is cut from the same cloth. As Mayencourt himself claimed, "this law is not about people, but about behaviour." A big promoter of the Safe Streets Act was Kathi Thompson, an ex-president of the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association, and a member of the business-supported "Safe Streets Coalition." She told a Province reporter at the time that, "our members are extremely concerned with this increased disorder," which she said, "is leading to a growing level of public and visitor insecurity." We wouldn't want to ruin some tourist's "experience" of Vancouver, by making him or her look at a panhandler begging for change outside a $100-a-plate restaurant. Sam wants to sweep it under the carpet, or better yet, to Surrey.

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