 Good morning everybody, Adam Palmer, Chief of the Vancouver Police Department. Thank you all for joining us this morning. There's a few things that we do want to talk to you about this morning. Joined with me on stage here is Mayor Ken Sim, of course, of the City of Vancouver. I'm joined by Carol Lee and Jordan Eng, community leaders in Vancouver, and all four of us will be speaking in the order that I mentioned the names. First thing I want to do is just frame up sort of this weekend because there's a lot of stuff going on, a lot of activities all throughout the city. This weekend, which was actually a fairly normal weekend in Vancouver, our officers responded to over 1,500 calls for service this weekend, including 167 priority one calls, which is the most serious type of calls that police officers respond to, and including 28 weapons calls over the weekend. But that's just a normal weekend in Vancouver. But some of the things that really stood out this weekend, including we had the shooting up at 28th and Victoria, which we did put a media release out on, I'm not planning on talking about that in detail, but I do want to acknowledge it that is an active investigation that will be gang related. And we have a lot of resources tied up in that investigation currently. Also this morning, I was woken up at about 4.50 in the morning, we had a car accident at Broad and Broadway, where two police officers were taken to Vancouver General Hospital. Both of those officers, one has been released, the other one may still be in hospital but probably be released shortly. And those officers will be okay, but it was a very serious car accident. The party in the other car was not taken to hospital. As far as the incident that I want to talk to you about primarily today is the tragedy that we had yesterday at the Light Up Chinatown Festival in Vancouver. So yesterday evening, as hundreds of people were gathered to celebrate, community, culture and everything that makes Vancouver's Chinatown such a wonderful place, the actions of a single person has shocked people with this apparent random act of violence. At Light Up Chinatown, a festival created to help revitalize and preserve one of our city's oldest and most cherished neighborhoods, a place that has already shown incredible and has always shown incredible resiliency to overcome significant challenges. Three people were stabbed and injured by a complete stranger. It was a senseless crime at this point in the investigation. It defies any logical explanation, although I'll talk a little bit more about how the investigation is proceeding. The man who committed this crime immediately left the area after the attack, but Vancouver police officers who were in the area responded immediately and arrested the suspect a few blocks away in the downtown east side. That suspect is now in custody as we work together evidence that will bring this person to justice and help explain why this senseless act of violence occurred. I'm joined here today as I mentioned by our Mayor Ken Sim to my left who will follow me with a prepared statement before we take questions. We're also joined by a number of Vancouver City Councilors and I want to thank the Councilors for your support and your ongoing community concern and thank you so much for being here today. Really appreciate your presence here with us. We're also joined by community leaders as I mentioned. So I just want to mention a few Carol Lee who's representing the Vancouver Chinatown Foundation as well well-known community leader in our city. Jordan Ng who's representing the Chinatown Business Improvement Association. Okay, Jordan, thank you for being here. Fred Kwok who's representing the Chinese Cultural Center is here with us as well. Thank you for being here, Fred. Lorraine Lo who represents another community icon in Vancouver, which is the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden and also Tracy Toh from the Vancouver Chinatown Merchants Association. On behalf of the Vancouver Police Department, I just want to thank all of our community leaders for everything you do because it really is a collaboration between police and community to keep the city safe. And you know in our city when we do have issues, social issues, crime issues and the intersection between those two, it is police and community working together on solutions to make Vancouver a safe place. It's not something that the police can do on their own and we don't. We're very fortunate to have strong community partnerships. So we're doing everything we can right now to try and explain this senseless act and what motivated yesterday's horrendous attack. And of course the motivation will be an important part of our ongoing efforts here. But in community, knowing our history and the value that build our communities are essential to guiding us into the future. You know what I would say that there's few places in Canada that have such a rich history as our own Vancouver Chinatown. It was built by just a handful of people in the 1800s. And recently I was down there and now I understand that even we're tracing the history back to the 1700s of people first coming to Vancouver. But certainly in the early 1800s, the first 1700s, early 1800s, the first Chinese settlers in our city. And that community has grown over the past century plus two centuries really to become one of the largest and most prosperous Chinese Canadian communities in our country and as well known throughout North America. Through the World Wars, the Great Depression, racist and intolerant government policies and pressures from expanding neighborhoods all around it. This community survived and thrived thanks to leaders like Carol, Jordan, Fred, Lorraine and Tracy. But recent years have not made that easy. We had the COVID-19 pandemic which shuttered storefronts and led to a significant rise in anti-Asian hate crime that everybody is familiar with and has been reported on widely by the media and has left many in community feeling unsafe. There's been an increase in disorder and street crime that began to create urban decay that the community has had to fight hard to push back on. Also pressures from growth and surrounding neighborhoods have increasingly threatened the culture and heritage that makes this place so treasured. All of those factors have led to a sense of things feeling less safe and not like they used to be. But through the strong and resilient members of the community, working with the police department, working with the city, leaders like we have up here today, our mayor, city council, our police board, the men and women of the Vancouver Police Department, we have worked relentlessly to change that and change the tide. And together we've helped the community launch a promising turnaround to restore a sense of safety. And I just want to talk about some of the things that have been done because I know that will come up in questions and a lot has been done. This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the hard work that we have collectively put into Chinatown and the surrounding neighborhoods. We have a community policing center, of course, at 44 East Pender Street. We have dedicated community police officers who understand the community, are from the community, they know its values and they know the neighborhood well. The new city of Vancouver Satellite Office that opened this summer in Chinatown at 112 Kiefer Street. The Juan Alexander Kamyau Civic Center is a great addition to the neighborhood and is working closely with our neighborhood policing efforts. We have more police presidents, more beat officers working in Chinatown than we've had previously and helping to quickly solve crimes preventatively before they happen and then when they do happen solve them quickly. And we've had many successes of anti-Asian racist attacks, stranger attacks, where we have arrested the perpetrators and brought them to justice. Multiple meetings with community leaders, including the people that I've mentioned, we have met with continuously over the past several years and with residents and merchants to address community safety concerns. We've implemented task forces to address anti-Asian hate crime in our city and we've talked about this nationally and internationally and also reduced barriers to reporting and also a combined effort whole of department with community from our operations division, our diversity section and our investigators have worked to bring people to justice for these types of crimes as well as increasing community awareness. We've worked with community on beautification projects, graffiti removal. We had the San Francisco delegation of VPD officers and community leaders that went to learn from San Francisco somewhat similar experiences in that community and they have an amazing Chinatown of course in San Francisco and of course lots of work that we've done on stranger attacks including project reclaim where we have brought many many people to justice for committing those types of crimes in our community. And the one thing we've really noticed over the past year is really a combined and coordinated effort from the federal, provincial and local governments coming together to support and revitalize Chinatown. So there's a lot of good things happening and a lot of good things to come and a lot of optimism has returned to Chinatown and that's why we were so excited and proud to see the community come together this past weekend for Light Up Chinatown. Over those two days thousands of people visited the neighborhood and celebrated everything that we love about Vancouver and everything we love about Chinatown. The festival was a resounding success and the senseless actions of one man should not change a thing about that. Our investigation into last night's tragic incident this triple stabbing is still in its early stages. There are some things that I can't talk about but some things that I simply don't know yet that will come to light but some things I can tell you about so we'll shed a little bit more light onto it. So just before 6 p.m. last night three people were amongst a crowd of other people near the festival's main stage near Columbia and Kiefer Street so that would be the 500 block of Columbia Street. With no warning and for no apparent reason a stranger approached these three people and attacked them stabbing each of them. The victims are a man and a woman in their early 60s and another woman in her early 20s. The three victims were all taken to local hospital for treatment. The injuries are serious but not life-threatening. VPD officers were working a special assignment call out at the festival when these attacks occurred and immediately jumped into action providing quick response and provided aid immediately to the three victims. They spoke to people nearby and obtained eyewitness descriptions of the suspect who had left the area immediately following the attack and they relayed this information to many other officers working in the area and I just have to say how incredibly incredibly proud I am of these police officers. They're poise, they're quick thinking, they're presence of mind because they will tell you when something like that happens there's an initial moment of chaos where you will see you know rumblings in the crowd you're not exactly sure what you're dealing with but to go into that chaotic situation and to restore calm to that tragedy is exactly what our officers did. This prevented further victims and led to the quick arrest of a suspect. The suspect in these attacks is a 64-year-old man. He's a non-Vancouver resident who was located within minutes of the crime in the downtown east side and taken to jail. He has had contact with police in the past but not here in Vancouver. We have no VPD records of this person. He was on a day pass from a lower mainland forensic psychiatric center outside of Vancouver. Investigators from our Operations Division, Forensic Identification Unit, our major crime section, and our Victim Services Unit have been working relentlessly on this case gathering evidence, gathering forensics, dealing with the suspect, and also attending to these victims to make sure that we provide wraparound services to help get them through this very traumatic incident that they have all experienced. And we're also working with Crown Council to obtain charge approval which we are hoping for in fairly short order. At that time of course this person's name will be released and you will be able to find out more information but at this time I'm not able to tell you this person's name so that that won't be part of our press conference today. Though a suspect has been arrested charges have not been laid and as I mentioned for that reason I can't give you a lot of specific detail and I also can't speak about the motor for the attack because I don't know what it is at this point. I know that there will be lots of questions you know given of course we have had stranger attacks we've had anti-Asian attacks in our city and other type of hate motivated crimes in our city. But this is obviously forming an important part of the investigation and is a key part as our investigators drill down to try and figure the motive but I can't tell you that today what the actual motive was and what was in the mind of this person when they acted the way they did but it will be an important part of the investigation and also of course future court proceedings. The victims have been treated for their injuries and in time their physical scars should heal but their emotional scars and the scars inflicted on the community as a result of this crime will of course take much longer. Last night's attack might cause some to doubt the tremendous progress that has collectively been made in Chinatown and that is understandable and I totally get why people would feel this but there's two things that we know for sure. The first is that on anything difficult in life that progress is rarely linear we often take several steps forward only to encounter obstacles setbacks and challenges that impede our path forward but as we've done collectively before we will find a way to overcome and move forward from this and continue to make Chinatown an incredible place to live work and visit as we help restore it. The other thing we know for certain is that the people who live and work in Chinatown are very resilient and very committed to community. Please know that we're in this together and that we have your backs and that crimes like this one that happened last night do not define the Chinatown community and I promise you that myself and members of the Vancouver Police Department will continue to work closely with Mayor Sim, with our council and all of our community leaders that we have here today and others in community to do everything in our collective power to support you and build on the tremendous progress that we have made together in Chinatown. I will now turn it over to Mayor Ken Sim before taking any questions. Thank you. Great, thank you. Thank you Chief and I hope you bear with me. I actually had some prepared statements and then it just didn't sit right and so I'm actually going to speak from the heart and I do want to acknowledge my council colleagues here. I do speak on behalf of them as well we do have a united voice here. So we were at the Light Up Chinatown event this weekend and it was an incredible celebration and there was there's a lot of energy and excitement. The community had come together and rallied and it was just it was so great to see you know the the community get together and the community has been just absolutely hey it's gone through a rough time over the last few years. You know it's been going through a rough time for a while but definitely during COVID it's been a very challenging time and the community has rallied and things were like like Chief said we're making a lot of progress and then you have the incident that happens at six o'clock last night where three innocent bystanders are assaulted violently assaulted and just it's heartbreaking and you know our hearts and our thoughts go out to the the individuals and their family and their friends and as the Chief mentioned you know knock knock home wood you know the physical wounds will heal and hopefully quickly but the trauma I can only imagine how significant it will be for a long time and not just with them but their family and friends and to the Chief's point the community you know it's a gut shot to the community as well and so all I can say is I'm not going to repeat all the details that the Chief mentioned but I can tell you being at that event this weekend and seeing how the community is rallying and how all levels of government are stepping up and it doesn't matter what side like what your political affiliation is there is a an energy of people really wanting to make this place a better place and I can tell you like the Chief mentioned this is a setback but make no mistake about it we're all here for the community it's our community as well and whatever we can do to make this place a better place we will we're not we're not giving up we're not giving up on this community whatsoever and I do want to give one shout out I you know I get the call at six o'clock last night and I can tell you I'm so proud of you know there's a lot of people we're proud of but I'm really proud of the VPD you know they're presented with a very challenging situation and they're on it right away you know like Chief mentioned and he's going to lead to like we're a big city now and they're going to be more incidents in general that's that's just the norm with every big city but the incredible response and how quickly it happened and they were on it and they called it in and they apprehended the suspect in short order you know situations happened and how you react to them is those are the things that we can control and I'm really proud that you know we have the VPD there yesterday and every single day so with that I'll pass it over to Carol. Well I want to start by echoing Mayor Ken Ken Sim's comments on behalf of the organizing committee of Light Up Chinatown we want to extend our deepest sympathy to the victims and their loved ones at this very difficult time and we pray for their full recovery. The incident that transpired was utterly devastating and heartbreaking. Firstly I would like to thank Chief Palmer, Deputy Chow and the entire VPD because of their quick action this was an isolated incident and within minutes of the attack the victims were being tended to, the suspect apprehended and the paramedics were on the scene. I would also like to thank Mayor Ken Sim and City Council who have supported the revitalization of Chinatown both with your actions to continue to improve public safety and street cleaning and being president the festival. Thank you very much. After putting on a very successful Light Up Chinatown Festival this is not how we thought it would end. We appreciate the tens of thousands of people who came out to show support for Chinatown. The festival brought a real sense of hope and optimism to the neighborhood and to the many businesses that call it home. We've had incredible support from all three levels of government but incidents like this that happened this weekend are the reason why we need to keep pushing for increased funding and safety measures because no one should feel scared in their neighborhood. Safety has always been a top priority and the only way we can revitalize this important and historic neighborhood is if we ensure that all residents and people who work or visit the neighborhood are safe. Chinatown is a committee that is defined by its resilience. While we'll need take to time to process this senseless act I have no doubt that the community will come together stronger and more determined to make the neighborhood a safe place for all. Thank you and now I'd like to call up Jordan Aang. Thank you Chief Palmer. Thank you Mayor Sim. Thank you Carol and thank you to the council members here. They're here to support us today. On behalf of the community partners the Dr. Sanyat San Garden the Chinese Cultural Center the Vancouver Chinatown Merchants Association and I think I speak for the broader community in Chinatown as well our thoughts are with the victims of the senseless act the senseless attack. I want to quickly thank well not quickly thank but I want to thank the VPD for their quick action the officers that were in the area were supporting the victim within seconds they were apprehending the the suspect within minutes so the quick action was really what got us to capturing the suspect and and we're pleased that that has been done. There isn't a single emotion that easily reflects how I feel right now. I mean we've heard the word devastating tragic and you know there's anger too I think there's anger in the community. I'm hearing messages this morning and I'm getting emails. This was a community event this was to bring the community together and it was to bring communities together to Chinatown to showcase Chinatown. It was a headliner event to end the summer after the love and support from all three levels of government. At the opening of the festival I told the audience we have memories of Chinatown we have great memories of Chinatown but we want to create new memories and this is not what we really this is not what we expected. It really is completely heart-wrenching to see what happened but this is the reason Chinatown was ringing the alarm bells during the pandemic and why the community felt that it was under siege. With the support of the new mayor and council we felt that we were turning the corner and we have been. We've made a lot of progress but it's incidents like that we've moved 10 steps ahead but incidents like this yesterday take us back and it reminds us that we are not there yet. We cannot take our foot off the pedal we need to move forward but we can but we cannot let incidents like this also put us back in the shadows and frighten the neighborhood. We are as the others have said a resilient community and we will come back stronger and I thank everyone for their support and being here for us thank you. Thanks very much we're going to do a question and answer here it's a big room there's lots of people in here so I'm going to ask that you keep your questions focused to the topic that we're here to discuss today if there's anything unrelated I will address those separately afterwards. If you have a question please direct advise who your question is for and we'll direct it towards them. Go ahead. Chief Palmer. Were the victims a family? To my knowledge two of the people are related the couple in their 60s are husband and wife. And maybe you could just shed some more light on what did the arrest look like I know there's lots of praise for the officers and how they went about it but this guy just standing on the side of the road on he's tasting street or what was the process like? They located him a few blocks away on he's tasting street to come into custody from my understanding without incident he was apprehended like didn't put up a fight or anything like that and he was taken to our station down near main end court over for processing. Last quick one here what was what site court was he from can you tell us that? I'm not going to get into those specifics until charges are laid and then there will actually be public record information that you will be able to find quite readily. Hand up in the back? Yep all three victims are Asian two of them are the couple is from Burnaby and the young woman is from Vancouver. Kristen? So that's obviously something that we want to know as well I don't have an answer for you right now that is something that is a very important part of our investigation either to confirm that and be able to prove that or to rule that out so that is a work in progress right now and a lot of that will be determined by statements made by this person that we have in custody either statements they made at the scene or statements they will make to our investigators and that part is still actively being investigated but we're definitely going to uncover that one way or the other. How concerning is it to you that the suspect was out on a day pass from a local psychiatric facility and able to essentially crash a community event and stab three strangers? Well it's very concerning it's terrible but I have to frame it that we have to remember that there are many people in community suffering from mental health issues and the vast majority of people in community with mental health issues don't have any interaction with the police whatsoever and they function well on medication or through counseling or different family supports but there are some people in our community that don't function well and are a danger to the general public and this person is one of those people apparently so I do have a lot of concerns when somebody of that nature is out roaming around just anywhere in our community. What I'll just say is elsewhere in British Columbia and serious interactions yes. You know I think the community cannot be afraid of events like this I mean this could have happened elsewhere in the city as well I think you know we have had a lot of support from the VPD with boots on the ground and working with it through the BIA and the community policing center so one incident cannot frame the community and we can't let it happen so thanks. Right so there are many things that have been ongoing over the past several years working very closely with many different communities throughout Vancouver to try and improve not only our crime numbers so the actual raw numbers of crimes happening in the city but also that sense of safety when people are walking around downtown and you know shopping or going to a movie or out with their family that kind of thing so we do have very good relationships with community we meet with many different community groups do a lot of listening hear their concerns and we come up with plans so for example when we're talking about anti-Asian hate crime I listed like a lot of the work and the projects that we had underway to address that I will say that just so people know anti-Asian hate crime those numbers have come down from the period during COVID when the numbers were very high but they are still higher than traditional numbers that we have seen in the city so the number is still elevated but it is lower than it was during the period around COVID-19 so those numbers have come down also other issues like stranger assaults we have launched large projects such as project reclaim which was a joint project with our organized or sorry our major crime section our patrol officers our diversity section and other elements of the department to bring people to justice that commit strange results and we've had very good success we've reported many of those to you Steve Addison could provide you many examples afterwards of arrests that we have made where people have committed these types of offenses there's always a concern and just going to go back to your comment when you have that intersection of mental health issues and criminality and most cases of mental health issues don't intersect with police but some do and when they do intersect with police sometimes they can be quite serious so we do have very advanced programs in place with coastal health and the provincial government to address those issues not only reactively but proactively so there's a whole host of different things that are all happening but I think it's important to remember that you know Vancouver is not a small city anymore you know the city is just over 700,000 but the region is 2.8 million or something like that and we are the epicenter for the entire province so any large city in Canada or the United States you are going to see unfortunately sometimes acts of violence you're going to see things in our community that can be shocking at times but I think it's important that you know we work together to have plans before crisis happens proactively to prevent things from happening but you know I'm also a realist and I know that there will be crisis and there will be things that will happen in community and it's also important that when that crisis happens that we respond collectively to bring people to justice and also work with community to get through tragedies like this because these can have long lasting impacts on people you know when they're violently assaulted such as this and then the overall community impact so it's a host of things all working together to keep Vancouver safe but you know I don't want to give you any illusions that there will never be you know any more crime happening in Vancouver because that's part of human nature unfortunately and we're going to do our best to curtail it and prevent it and investigate it when it happens sure right so that's a great question because I know like that's another point too is that there's been lots of discussions about bail reform and catch and release and revolving door of justice all these catchphrases that we always hear out in community this case I'm very confident that this person will not be released and the reason for that is serious criminal allegations of course so on that aspect we are working with crown council our forensics people our major crime investigators victim services patrol officers many people that were involved in this case are all working together with the victims putting a very solid case together for crown council as you know in British Columbia there's three provinces in Canada be senior Brunswick and Quebec where the police can't lay charges the charges have to be laid by crown council and being that type of a province we have to wait for crown to sign off and give the approval so we're working through that our detectives are working hand in glove with crown to get all the evidence together because as you can imagine in a large community event there'll be lots of video you know everybody's got a smartphone out nowadays there's video on cctv on surrounding buildings so there's just a lot of evidence to collect and process so that's happening right now our recommendation of course will be to keep this person in custody but the reason that I'm confident in this particular case that this person will be held in custody is because aside from the criminal side there's also the fact that he was on a day pass from a forensic psychiatric institute so that will make it much easier to hold this person back in custody until this works its way through the system oh sure yeah so we had lots of police officers on call out lots of police officers working in community anybody that was down there knows that it's right around the corner from our community policing center we had officers like right there basically at the time it happened that we're working as part of the call out we had other officers that were there throughout the weekend that were just down there as part of the festivities there was security as well and and anytime that we're holding any kind of a public event with community organizers we put together an operational plan with community to make sure that we have the right number of officers and security you know the roads are blocked off there's a traffic plan there there's a number of different aspects to it and it worked you can't prevent everything from happening but once something happened our officers were on it right away provided aid to the victims and took the suspect into custody actually the police handled it very quickly so you didn't really see too much going on I think it was very isolated I think there were some people that were close to where the incident happened that might have been affected but I was you know maybe 20 feet away and didn't see it although I saw some police officers going in and and then it was there really wasn't much to see if you weren't right there so I'm very grateful for that because I think if you were close by it's a traumatic thing to see somebody at a at a community event you know just an innocent bystander getting stabbed so but we're very grateful I just want to reiterate what other people have said the vpt were amazing in this incident it happened in seconds they were on it the victims were being treated they apprehended the suspect they arrested him and there were paramedics and there was a plan in place immediately they sort of evacuated the area and by and large like it was close to the very end of the festival so most people had left so we're very grateful for that too thanks one more for Chief Palmer that's okay one second Kristen I had a question first then we'll go with you just just say I know you all have stories to file we've got some guests that need to be getting on their way so we'll do another round of questions if there's questions that have not already been asked go for it this is going to be last call so we'll Kristen and then you're up next and Bob overshadow your efforts and others efforts to revitalize no I wish you wouldn't ask me that question we're very personal yeah we'd work very hard to put this festival on to bring community together to celebrate all the progress that we've made we've had so much support from government from community people around Vancouver so but we'll be undeterred I mean I think that you know you can't let something like this beat the mark that stops you and it's a neighborhood that's known for its resilience so we feel very lucky we've been working with the city the province the federal government and particularly the vpd I mean I think that you know it's just a reminder you know maybe it's like you know we thought things were going well but it's a good reminder that there's lots of things that are in play in Chinatown because of where it's situated and it's a very coordinated effort it's not going to be an easy fix so we're going to have setbacks like this along the way but I think that we're on the right path and you know it'll take us time to sort of regroup but we'll come back stronger thank you Kristen what type of object in the suspect use I can't get into details on that but I will just tell you that an object has been recovered and is in our custody last question was Bob I'm not a hundred percent certain don't believe so but not a hundred percent certain I'm looking to acting deputy chief Lisa Byrne is overseeing our investigation so she doesn't think so okay thanks very much everybody if you've got any questions that weren't addressed here you can email me and I'll do my best to answer them just shoot me an email and I'll take care of the session