Police say they will continue deploying additional officers on overtime pay to patrol the 900-block of Pandora on foot for another five weeks, as part of a plan to improve public safety and get people off the streets.
That stretch of Pandora, the site of an ongoing homeless encampment, has been targeted by criminals who have set up tents for weapons storage and drug trafficking, says Victoria Police Chief Del Manak.
“Those are the individuals that we want to target and we want to make sure that they know that the police are there,” Manak said at a news conference on Tuesday where he announced the details of a public safety plan for Pandora and Ellice Street, where there is another encampment.
Officers on special-duty overtime shifts have been patrolling the two streets to deter criminal activities ever since a bike paramedic was assaulted by a patient on the 900-block of Pandora Avenue on July 11.
Manak said a “tenure of violence” had encroached into the area, threatening the safety of first responders in recent months.
Police will be heavy-handed on the criminals but “soft and caring, with a high degree of compassion” for those who are vulnerable and in need of support, he said.
Victoria police have set aside close to $80,000 for overtime costs for the nine weeks of increased patrols.
In the next two weeks, police are hoping to begin a comprehensive enforcement sweep with the help of bylaw officers to remove problematic structures on the two streets, a process that’s expected to take two to three weeks, he said.
Manak acknowledged that sustained success can only be achieved with the support of the city, local-area service providers, B.C. Housing and health authorities working together.
“This isn’t just a VicPD plan,” he said, adding that agencies are much better co-ordinated and aligned with each other now than before. “The ground has shifted, and we’re going to see hopefully a far more greater success.”
CEO Julian Daly said criminal elements preying on the homeless was one of the obstacles identified by Our Place — which provides support services for the street community — along with lack of outreach, shelter spaces and appropriate health services.
Daly said he welcomed the fact that police have taken the opportunity “to finally focus on the people who are criminals on the street.”
“They’re not criminalizing people who are homeless because they’re homeless, and we’re glad to see that.”
Since July, the province’s health and housing ministries, the City of Victoria, Island Health, VicPD and service providers have been meeting weekly to figure out what to do about the entrenched street encampments in Victoria, Daly said.
Daly said he’s feeling positive about the meetings, though he couldn’t go into specifics due to confidentiality agreements.
“This is the first time for many years that everyone who needs to come together, who has a piece of this solution, has come together and are determined to to make significant changes.”
Daly said Victoria police’s nine-week timeline for its partner agencies to start providing temporary or permanent housing to those living along Pandora Avenue and Ellice Street is realistic.
One thing he doesn’t believe, however, is that the July 11 assault on the paramedic represents growing disorder on the streets.
The individual accused of the assault was violent “because they were mentally unwell, not because they were inherently violent and criminal in nature,” he said.
Daly said his organization had repeatedly sought help for the man, who has a history of seizures.
Nonetheless, paramedics and firefighters are no longer responding to the 900-block of Pandora Avenue without a police escort.
Corey Froese, provincial safety director for the union representing paramedics and ambulance dispatchers, said incidents like the July 11 assault can cause long-lasting trauma for paramedics.
“Those types of traumatic events, they have a very ugly way of rearing their head,” he said. “It causes fear, it causes all sorts of emotional trauma.”
The paramedic was part of a pair of bike paramedics responding to a report of a seizure in the Pandora tent encampment, Froese said. He was putting away his gear after assessing the vital signs of the patient, who was conscious, co-operative and wanting to be transported to hospital, when the patient suddenly punched the paramedic in the face “out of nowhere,” Froese said.
“He got knocked to the ground, and then unfortunately, while he was on the ground trying to crawl away to safety, he got kicked in the face by the same person.”
About 60 people in the encampment converged after they saw the paramedic was knocked down, Froese said.
The incident prompted a rare all-hands call for every available Victoria officer and responses from five neighbouring police departments to a situation that Victoria City Police Union president Angela Van Eerd had described as a “very hostile environment.”
Manak said police are prioritizing emergency responses that require a police escort, and he’s offered firefighters and paramedics the ability to make their own call as to whether an escort is needed for potential life-or-death responses.
Froese said he’s not aware if any changes to the police escort requirement would happen soon.
There are regularly updated violence-risk assessment documents for nearly every tent encampment in B.C., including the ones on Pandora and Ellice, but the situation can change by the minute, he said.
“Everything that the police has done, from my perspective, has been much needed,” he said. “We have a legal obligation to be safe and paramedics don’t always know what to look for.”
