A police officer uses a phone at a crime scene outside the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver, on Sept. 4.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
On Thanksgiving Sunday, a woman walking near Vancouver’s cruise-ship terminal at beautiful Canada Place was punched and kicked repeatedly in the face by a stranger. It was just before 9 a.m. – broad daylight, as they say. There had been no previous interaction between the attacker and the victim, a 35-year-old tourist, the Vancouver Police Department said.
Sometimes, as in this case, random attacks make headlines. Last month, there was a lot of media attention around the gruesome knifings that killed one man and severed another’s hand a few blocks away.
But these are just the incidents that make the news. Earlier this month, someone I know was walking near her home when she was slapped in the face, completely unprovoked, by a woman on the street. Also in broad daylight. When she reported this to the VPD and showed officers a video, she learned the woman was known to police.
When I mentioned this upsetting incident to another friend, she told me what had happened to her: She was heading to a celebration of life on a sunny Saturday, carrying a couple of bottles of wine and a box of food, when she was shoved to the ground by a visibly troubled man – smashing a bottle of Chilean merlot all over her.
“How could you not have told me this?” I asked her; we are pretty tight. “Oh, well, these things are becoming almost normalized, aren’t they,” she replied. She added that another friend of hers had been pushed on the sidewalk near her office twice in a single week – same sort of M.O.
Those three incidents happened near the Downtown Eastside, with its well-documented troubles. The other assaults happened elsewhere in Vancouver – downtown proper, and in an urban residential neighbourhood.
It has emerged that the suspect in last Sunday’s beating had been charged with assault in November, 2023, and appeared in court 15 times since, according to the Vancouver Sun. The person charged in the earlier double-knife attack had more than 60 previous interactions with police across the region.
That statistic, the horrific nature of the attacks, and no doubt the it-could-have-been-me-or-my-loved-one factor caught not only the attention of the public, but of politicians heading into an election campaign.
Last month, David Eby, the NDP Leader, announced that the province would force involuntary care for people with concurrent addiction, mental illness and acquired brain injuries. “Increasingly, I’m concerned that the way that they are interacting in our communities is making everybody less safe,” he said.
His main opponent, BC Conservative Leader John Rustad, has also promised to expand involuntary treatment.
But involuntary treatment is unproven in terms of effectiveness, as my colleagues Andrea Woo and Mike Hager reported this week.
There are concerns beyond effectiveness, too. What about the human rights of these people, who are obviously struggling? It speaks to how bad have things gotten if Mr. Eby – the former head of the BC Civil Liberties Association, for heaven’s sake – is banking on involuntary treatment as a fix.
In all of this, though, other humans’ rights must also be considered. Vancouverites – and visitors – have the right to go about their day without fear of being assaulted by a random stranger.
Here’s an anecdote, also from Thanksgiving Sunday, a few hours after the Canada Place attack. I had occasion to visit a fast-food spot near my home (to pick up a couple of chicken wraps for my teenager, if you must know – yes, happy Thanksgiving to us). A woman, clearly troubled, was holding the door open and smoking – which is obviously prohibited. More concerning were two men at the counter causing grief for the two very young women – probably also teenagers – working that early evening.
Call me Karen, but old me – prefatal downtown knifing – would have at least asked the woman at the door not to smoke in the restaurant. New me – call me Coward – said nothing. But I hovered near the counter, phone in hand, ready to step in if needed – or at least call 911.
Everything worked out, but the incident has me worrying about what young people have to deal with as they work part-time restaurant jobs to save money for university or whatever.
These are anecdotes, I know – but everyone around here seems to have an anecdote these days.
The VPD doesn’t track random assaults per se, but using data they’ve collected, they’ve determined that in 2021, there were on average 4.5 random and unprovoked stranger assaults a day. That fell to 1.8 a day in 2022 and 1.1 in 2023. B.C.’s “catch-and-release” justice system, meanwhile, is overwhelmed, as Mr. Hager has reported.
Whoever wins Saturday’s election, I hope they have the wherewithal to deal with this and to do so humanely – for all of us.