Is Task Force Barrage undermining OPS?

The VPD’s controversial Task Force Barrage initiative came under scrutiny last week, as community groups claimed police were parking vehicles outside overdose prevention sites, deterring people from using the life-saving services, and as questions were raised about how the group was funded.

• The mayor dodged questions by CTV on Wednesday over how the $5 million in funding for the initiative was approved, as the announcement came after the 2025 budget was finalized, and never went before the board for discussion.

Background: Task Force Barrage was announced in mid-February this year, with Mayor Ken Sim saying in a press release that the “status quo isn’t working” and that “organized crime, drug trafficking and repeat offenders are preying on the most vulnerable, while everyday Vancouverites continue to see the impacts of crime.”

From the outset, community organizations in the Downtown Eastside have spoken out against Task Force Barrage, saying true solutions for the DTES need to come from the community — and don’t include more policing.

Questionable funding: The Vancouver Police Board is required under the Police Act to approve police budgets, and changes must be submitted to city council by March 1 there has been no public documentation the initiative was ever proposed to or approved by the board.

The only publicly available funding request for the task force is retrospective — a first quarter budget variance report to the board seeking an additional $7 million includes the related $5 million in overtime costs. Asked whether the board knew about the initiative prior to its announcement, Sim told CTV he “can’t comment on what people did and didn’t know,” despite the fact that he is a member of the board.

• Although the variance report described the task force as a joint effort by the VPD and city council, Green Coun. Pete Fry told CTV earlier this month that council has never approved those costs. And former board member Faye Wightman told CTV she believed Sim “would like to think that he’s running the VPD out of his office.”

Police budgeting: It isn’t unusual for police to seek extra funding for unplanned overtime. In the second quarter of 2024, the VPD was over budget by nearly $11 million, citing in a variance report on overtime at protests and during the Stanley Cup finals. However, Wightman said this kind of initiative should have gone before decision-makers rather than being retroactively added to the budget with a variance, according to CTV.

“It’s certainly not following due process, and it’s certainly not following good governance,” she said.

Cop cars outside OPS: In a press release last week, Police Oversight With Evidence and Research (POWER) said police have “returned to parking and lingering” outside healthcare sites — in particular, harm reduction sites, “despite a longstanding agreement between VPD and Insite” that they wouldn’t do so.

• VPD spokesperson Sgt. Steve Addison told CBC he wasn’t aware of that agreement, but Pivot Legal Society staff lawyer Caitlin Shane said VPD confirmed the informal policy to not block access to OPS in emails to Pivot in 2022.

Why it matters: With more policing in the Downtown Eastside, VPD officers are “routinely teaming up in large groups to harass people living on the street,” POWER said, adding that it “has led to distress among DTES residents and service providers.” The latter group noted patrons often avoid harm reduction sites when police are around.

It isn’t just harm reduction sites — one doctor, whose identity was protected by POWER, is quoted in the news release saying a “massive chilling effect” occurs at the community clinics where they work in the DTES due to the heightened police presence.

What the VPD says: Addison called the claims a “ridiculous false narrative,” denying that a police car being parked outside harm reduction services would have such a chilling effect, according to the Tyee.

• “The notion that an unoccupied police car would deter someone from accessing one of these services is ignorant of reality,” Addison said. “It is not an enforcement priority to arrest people on the DTES who are living with drug addiction and it’s been that way for years.”

What the evidence says: Participants in one study confirmed police presence deters people from accessing harm reduction services.

“I don't trust them [cops] at all. And I do think that they are kind of preventing people from using in safe places,” a 25-year-old Indigenous woman told the study’s authors. “Sometimes they [cops] park their cars in front of Insite, and so nobody wants to be around there, right? So we're going into unsafe alleys and whatnot.”

Enforcement priorities: Despite Addison’s claims that arrest for personal possession is “not an enforcement priority,” Pivot Legal Society staff lawyer Caitlin Shane told The Tyee that the data would suggest otherwise. Numbers published by the province show drug possession offences dropped significantly with the onset of decriminalization before nearly tripling after the province effectively ended the initiative.

‘A whack-a-mole game’: Although some local residents told Global News they feel safer since the launch of Task Force Barrage, the Hastings Crossing Business Improvement Association noted it appears to simply be pushing disorder into other neighbourhoods, describing it as “a whack-a-mole game.”

• “We have seen some positive results in the core areas, but we are seeing some of the issues just spreading throughout the city,” the BIA’s executive, Landon Hoyt, told Global, adding he’s heard from neighbouring BIAs that they are experiencing heightened street disorder.

Not the first controversy: Late last month, a whistleblower’s complaint to the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner went public, calling the initiative a “politically motivated crackdown” and claiming officers were given arrest quotas to meet — a charge that former chief Adam Palmer denied, according to The Canadian Press.