 morning everybody thanks very much for coming out today big turnout we're here today to provide what's going to be quite a comprehensive update about hate crime and protest trends through 2023 we are likely to be here a little bit longer than normal because there's a lot of information that we're going to provide we have three speakers here today first being Staff Sergeant Astrid Bonter representing the Vancouver Police Department's diversity community and indigenous relations section followed by Staff Sergeant Bonter we will have Inspector Jeff Newman N-E-U-M-A-N representing the Vancouver Police Department's emergency operations and planning section and we also have Inspector Mike Rowe R-O-W-E representing the VPD's major crime section following remarks from Staff Sergeant Bonter and Inspector Newman we'll take questions I'll moderate the questions we'll do our best to answer all of those questions and if you have anything that's unrelated to the main topic today we'll address those afterwards thank you good morning thank you for having me this morning in collaboration with Inspector Newman I'll focus on three areas of interest hate trends affecting our communities at large hate motivated incidents that have risen out of the war in the Middle East and finally what steps we have taken as a department to proactively address public safety concerns in our communities this Sunday marked 100 days since Hamas's attack on Israel October 7th 2023 a moment in history that will not be forgotten by many communities directly and indirectly impacted by the violence of that day and the ensuing war in the Middle East well I cannot begin to speak on behalf of the communities embroiled in this conflict I can say that without question their suffering is seen and heard to begin in 2023 the Vancouver Police Department received and thoroughly investigated 265 reports of hate motivated incidents these are incidents that target a person based on their race national or ethnic origin language color religion sex age mental or physical disability sexual orientation or gender identity or expression the number 265 marks an overall increase of 31 percent from 2022 with increased incidents of hate noted in our 2s lgbtq plus community the south asian community and the jewish community these increases are driven by a number of international and global factors including public discourse arising around the calistan movement the summer eruption of protests and rallies related to sexual orientation and gender identity and of course the war in the middle east with which I will address in more detail shortly these increases highlight hate and unrest between people but if there is a silver lining to be drawn from these reports of hate increases in reporting mark grand scale attitude shifts that have declared once acceptable behavior to be wrong and intolerable when a member of the public calls police because they have been a victim of a hateful act or because they have observed a hateful act they are doing the right thing more people calling out hate more people seeing hate for what it is leads to an increase in our reporting numbers I will take a moment to draw us back to the height of the COVID-19 pandemic during this time we saw a market increase in hate directed at our east asian communities in 2020 we captured 98 hate motivated incidents in 200 in 2023 this number was increased decreased to 46 we see reports coming in hate being identified and we see overall numbers of hate motivated incidents against the east asian community declining well this trend is good I acknowledge that even one incident is one incident too many to speak specifically to the war in the middle east and how this conflict has spilled over in our city I spoke about a 62 percent increase in hate motivated incidents impacting the jewish community this amounts to 47 reported hate motivated incidents in 2023 versus 29 in 2022 and most notably 33 hate motivated incidents impacting the jewish community since october 7th that's 70 percent of the annual total in respects to incidents related to the war in the middle east as a whole the vpd has documented 50 separate incidents these include incidents on all sides of the conflict charges have been recommended in 17 separate incidents some of the investigations have resulted in charges and these are and they are they are as follows two women walking away from a pro israel rally on october 9th were accosted by teenage boys who threatened to rape and slice their faces our officers immediately arrested the suspects gathered additional evidence and recommended criminal charges to crown council a 19 year old and a 15 year old have now been charged with uttering threats and assault and as part of their bail conditions they are not allowed to step foot in the city of vancouver in the days following the october 7 attacks on israel a man repeatedly returned to a jewish school and made anti-semitic comments and gestures including a highl hitler salute toward many people including a rabbi because we had proactively positioned police officers near jewish schools and community centers following the attacks we were able to quickly identify and arrest the suspect who has now been charged with criminal harassment his bail conditions now prohibit prohibit him from going anywhere near that school an 87 year old man was headbutted and injured on commercial drive by a man waving a palestinian flag in early november the victim a man of jewish descent had taken issue when he saw the accused waving the flag and yelling free palestine they exchanged words prompting the suspect to come across the street and assault the senior the suspect was arrested by the vancouver police and was now been charged with assault each one of these events deeply impact a person's sense of belonging and safety in their community i've only spoken about charge files we have also investigated incidents impacting the muslim and west asian communities these events include incidents of grafitti and hateful commentary written across the wall of the community community center saying all muslims should die grafitti on public washroom doors saying i'm going to burn every palestinian alive grafitti on the interior walls of our schools where children are meant to feel safe human excrement rubbed on a vehicle bumper bearing a free palestine sticker whether it be a hateful gesture anti islamic or anti muslim commentary as swastika written on a sidewalk window or wall an assault a threat or an active intimidation this behavior cannot be normalized and will not be tolerated in this city cases are solved when someone calls police to report a crime and i want to take this opportunity to tell people that we want to hear from you you can contact us through non-emergency through 911 and through online reporting mechanisms that are featured on our vpd diversity webpage which is translated into 13 different languages if you have been targeted due to your race religion national or ethnic background gender identity sex sex or sexual orientation we want to hear from you as we have since the onset of the war in the middle east we will continue to work closely with law enforcement and counter-terrorism partners both here in canada and internationally before turning it over to inspector newman i will highlight some of the actions that we have taken to meet the needs of our diverse communities here in vancouver within hours of october 7 attacks on israel we began reaching out to our leaders from multiple faiths to address urgent safety concerns we activated our departmental operations center which serves as a 24 7 command and control center during major incidents and events this allowed us to move resources urgently and as needed to various various locations within our city we assigned dedicated police resources to maintain an over presence at certain locations around the city including places of worship public and private schools and community centers we deployed school liaison officers to public and faith-based schools to keep our children and teachers safe in addition to conflict specific responses to hate and public safety concerns we continue to engage in significant outreach with community groups and faith groups including members of our jewish and muslim communities and others who have felt the impacts of the events in the middle east as in other cities one of the biggest challenges we continue to face as a result of the israel hamas war is the number and frequency of protests as well as the unprecedented volatility connected to some of these protests i will now defer to inspector newman to provide an update on this front and then we will move to questions hello inspector jeff newman of the emergency operations and planning section i am here to give uh the public an update on the protest activity in the city of vancouver so typically in the city of vancouver we used to see a pre-pandemic and in 2020 approximately 600 protests a year in 2021 and 2022 that increased to 800 protests per year last year in 2023 was a record-breaking year with over 1000 1000 18 protests last year what that contributed to was a significant impact on the operational budget of the vancouver police department resulting in four million dollars in overtime costs for our policing members it also resulted due to the complexity of the protest actions an increase of 27 percent of our deployments of our officers to these events one other uh events or special events that also increased in 2023 as we exited the pandemic was our special event planning so the emergency operations and planning section oversees the planning of last year in 2023 1700 events combined with the 1000 protests that was 2700 events that our department had to manage in pre-planning in the implementation of any plans as well as any follow-up care afterwards leading up to the israel hamas war october 7th after the ateris attack on israel since that date there have been 80 special events that we have deployed officers to resulting in 1800 shifts in providing special attention to all communities to ensure public safety for the citizens of vancouver these events have often drawn large groups of people with opposing views and create a significant volatility to the motions involved in order to ensure public safety we have front loaded our members out to those events to make sure that our members are there under a strong command structure to prevent any incidents of violence we have spent over two and a half million dollars to date covering off these events these 80 events for the israel hamas war in addition to the overtime there's also considerable regular duty and over department resources that have been tasked and committed to our resourcing the vancouver police department staff sergeant bonter has spoke to those but that would be our school liaison unit our operations division has been fully committed with our patrol division our metro teams our investigative division for after-action incidents and following up any major incidents of violence or crime committed during these protests or these events we have also stayed engaged with our local partners whether they're city partners our other fellow agencies outside of the city of vancouver we've stayed in weekly contact provincially as well as as well as nationally and staying in touch with our national partners to ensure consistency of action but also to stay ahead of any protest actions that might occur in the city of vancouver what have we been doing to balance the public safety for protests one thing we have been doing is we support everyone's right underneath the charter they're right to a lawfully protest the caution there is lawfully so we will support everybody's right to protest but it must be done lawfully we encourage everyone who does protest to do it peacefully to respectfully in accordance with the law and anyone who breaks that law they may put themselves or others at risk for face criminal charges and or arrest these protests and these events are managed by an experienced group of commanders to ensure that there is a reasonable and proportionate police response to any criminal activity but one thing we will iterate is that the blockage of critical infrastructure is a significant public safety risk and that will is not acceptable in the city of vancouver it affects our first responders responses uh while they're on duty it also affects our first responders who are responding to chefs whether it's to hospital chefs vancouver fire service rescue or bc ambulance that concludes this thank you very much thanks very much inspector and staff sergeant a lot of information there um we'll solve i will facilitate a question and answer now um let's make sure everybody has an opportunity to ask a one initial question before we start going through uh with follow-ups if you don't mind and as you ask the question i'll defer to the most appropriate person good mic yeah i just want to clarify um just regarding the protests have you made a rest at the protest that are related to hate crime i'll defer that one to uh inspector nevin this might actually be best deferred to inspector roe but i can say that there has been a rest made at protests related to hate crime i believe we're up to 13 people is that correct for charged people for charges offenses related to protests one of those was the one that staff sergeant banter spoke to and that was related to teenagers who threatened to rape uh a young female and they subsequently prior to that incident committed an assault on another bystander we have followed up with that and they're also charged with assault incidents i'm just curious on torber 7th who somebody is watching the news just can you walk me through that process when this terrorist attack at what point who says within the vpd oh my gosh we have to do something and and what happens how does that process get going well i i mean i can i can uh perhaps speak to that off the baton i can tell you that in the morning of october 7th a lot of us found out about the horrible events that had occurred the attacks by hamas against israel the way much of the world did through the news we immediately engaged with other public safety partners locally regionally nationally and internationally including counter terrorism partners to assess and mitigate any risks that could be present here in locally in vancouver we began immediately outreaching to community leaders faith leaders we began hearing from members of our community who expressed deep and grave concerns about their their personal safety we heard from our own community members here who are deeply concerned about the events that they were seeing unfold overseas in israel people who may have family in that region or friends in that region and had concerns about their own safety and how the events from overseas could reverberate here in in vancouver so we initiated a plan which immediately involved deploying officers to various locations throughout the community locations we considered to be high risk community centers places of worship schools and other locations where we believe there were we were hearing from community members and we believe based on our own for information that there could be risks we activated our departmental operations center and we can continue to engage and we have continued to engage with the community throughout the past 100 days to continuously assess to respond to community needs to meet the community's needs to reassure the community to make sure that everybody can remain as safe as we can keep them and can feel safe at a time that's very very much uncertain and a time when there's a tremendous amount of anxiety throughout our community when was the last time the vpd felt the need to be so proactive russia invading ukraine what what's that the alarm bells off in this case when was something you of like we um while the events that unfolded on october 7th and the events that have unfolded in israel in gaza and in the middle east since october 7th um have caused a significant amount of concern and prompted a significant response from the vancouver police department in terms of responding to community needs and ensuring people remain safe i can tell you that we engage in a similar outreach to the community and similar responses on a variety of levels as you would have seen through the the the calisthen various geopolitical events whether the calisthen issues in iran with the the various marches that we saw in demonstrations that we saw throughout the city during the summer looking back to covet when we had rig excuse me um regular rallies marches demonstrations um this is work that we all that we're doing consistently throughout the community on a variety of causes this one just because of the emotions uh the very intense emotions that people are feeling um the very intense concerns that people have for their own personal safety um the needs from the community um that uh we are uh working to continuously meet um and the incidents of rising anti-semitism that we've seen as well as other hate incidents that we've seen uh since october 7th have prompted a very significant uh response from us and will continue to work with the community to make sure that we've met the community's needs and that we're doing everything that we can within our power to keep the the community safe rumina so do you have a certain amount of money roughly that you look at that you budget for for protests and are we over that i mean it sounds like you're dealing you're dealing with millions of dollars based on what you said are you looking for additional funds the war continues do you need support from the city on top of what your budget already allows for for this we'll pass that over to inspector the vpd budget for protests was approximately one million dollars in 2022 based on the amount of environmental protests we saw with the highway blockades as an organization we increased the budget to two million dollars for 2023 we've quickly surpassed that with the unanticipated war of israel and homos going forward into 2024 it'll be hard to project as to what geopolitical events may result in further protests in the city of vancouver our job will just be to ensure public safety and to deploy officers to where we need to do that in order to ensure that those protests are done lawfully and the citizens of vancouver feel safe as they traverse through the city at this point are you asking the city for additional money based on what you anticipate at this point we're not asking the city for any additional funds at this time we're uh we're re-looking at 2023 for what we incurred for the four million dollars as well as the two and a half million dollars that were incurred recently after the israel homos war has been initiated so where does that money get pulled from in your in your budget if if these are unanticipated it's war happened it continues so what where is the money getting pulled from the money will eventually get pulled from our larger general budget that our executive will have to approach the city and the city manager and they'll have to try to resolve where they can to find the future funding if this continues at this pace that it has in the last sort of 90 days or 2024 quite just looking at the press release some of the key metrics that i know anti-semitism incidents are highlighting i'm just wondering if there is any information about islamophobia or anti-muslim incidents because that doesn't seem to be i guess in the press release i know there was some incidents highlighted during the overall conference what was the data and if not why like that we miss it master do you want to speak about the data related to specifically related to the muslim community yeah i won't get into the specific numbers but we have absolutely seen an increase in hate motivated incidents against our muslim communities as well as our west asian communities um those increases the raw data numbers are not as high as we have seen in the jewish community but those events have absolutely happened and i did talk about the graffitti incidents as well that have impacted the muslim community what i would say about those numbers we're reporting on incidents that are being brought to our attention and why we're here today is to encourage the public from all walks of life from all different communities to come to us and bring us their concerns that relate to hate absolutely there may be incidents of under reporting in all communities in the muslim community and the west asian community so if that's the case this is our appeal to those groups that if they feel they have been targeted as a result of their membership to a particular group they need to come to us and let us know we are here to address their concerns and make sure that they feel safe in their community that's our objective as a department and so just to be clear the reason those numbers were recruited was because they're not as high as what's reported in terms of the jewish community that that's correct that's not to say that those incidents haven't happened they're just not as high so that affects where we're placing resources um however we absolutely have an ear to all communities we have sat with community leaders we have come into their faith of their faith communities as well as their churches their mosques their synagogues and listen to their concerns and we will continue to do that it's sort of a similar question but relates to the specific stat on 50 criminal offenses since the breakout of this war or since the uh the initial attack uh of those 50 offenses do we have a breakdown of who the targets were were they anti-semitic or were they islamophobic or um or what have you inspector is that an ad a question that we have an answer to here or is that something you want to follow up on i'm going to follow if you can you send me an email about that personally send me an email and um i'll work on getting um an answer for you i just don't we just don't have that um and i appreciate you know that maybe a specific stat but we're talking about the islamophobic component is there even a rough percentage of you know we're talking about a major uptake in anti-semitism and i appreciate perhaps before it's having come in about islamophobia but i think the public might be a bit confused because we've heard from the human rights commissioner we've heard from the premier some of these figures are almost mentioning the anti-semitism and the islamophobia in you know one sentence after another is if they are on equivalent uh levels but the police stats don't really um don't line up with that at least based on on this report okay sorry what was your question i'm just trying to get a sense of the statistics here or even the the percentage basis even if you don't do the exact figure right now i can work on getting you um the precise number of hate motivated incidents that have been reported um from um the muslim community is it would that answer your question sure okay do we have an ad do we have that answer i can try to provide some general detail that might be of some assistance so um numbers wise we have a 50 total events that have risen out of the relate to the conflict um 33 of those have been identified as be has having a hate component for the jewish community and then those remaining of those remaining 17 approximately 10 of which relate to our west asian muslim community and then another handful of events that may have happened at different rallies or protests that have been for an example an assault on a police officer or a conflict between between two people on on both sides of the conflict but occurring within within the process itself and not hate related um i think it's really important to acknowledge the fact that there may be under reporting this is absolutely not to say that the events aren't happening there may be under reporting and part of this year why we're here today is to break down those barriers to invite those communities um who who may historically have not had a positive relationship with police to come to us we are here to listen um and not discriminate about discriminated about who's coming to us with their complaints thank you go ahead are you going to share the jewish school that was targeted no um i'm sorry we're not going to simply for the uh safety um and privacy of the people who were targeted it's not information that we're going to share at this time thank you for understanding there any other questions in the room we can go around again if anybody has a follow-up mic yeah um just the number of hate or the incidents investigated by the vpd have you been tracking the number of charges that have actually led to prosecution to get an idea um are you are you uh referring strictly from um incidents during the pandemic mic pandemic i can i can speak to that again i can't i don't have the numbers on me we can get back to you with an email but we absolutely do track all of the hate motivated incidents that rise to to a charge standard and in fact when something is identified to be motivated by hate bias or prejudice we are looking at those files our hate crimes investigators are looking at those files and deciding whether or not a 718.2 application should be recommended to crown council and that would basically be consideration for an aggravated aggravation as a result of the hate motivation so a consideration for additional sentencing as a result of the hate component do you have any numbers about successful prosecutions related to hate crimes i don't have those numbers available right now but we can certainly provide those through email and like that might be um um also a question that you might want to connect with the bc prosecution service on um which might be able to provide a um a broader um explanation province wide we can only speak to vancouver and certainly once uh a case is is forwarded from us we collect evidence as you know make recommendations to crown council it's the independent authority of the bc prosecution service crown council to lay charges and to see those cases through the courts um so if you're uh there may be another avenue for you to seek that from the bc prosecution service let's make sure we're done here on hate crimes and protests please and on that i will answer your other questions um astrid is that something that we have uh we're able to speak to we can say that we've uh we've got um a decrease in particularly involving members of the east asian and southeast asian community that were largely targeted during the pandemic and we've seen a number start to go down but i'll i'll defer to staff sergeant bonter to elaborate that a little bit on that i just go back to some of the comments that i made uh earlier we in the during the height of the pandemic in 2020 we entertained 98 incidents of hate motivated incidents against the east asian community and now looking in this year 2023 we have seen a significant decline we're looking at i believe it to be 46 uh hate motivated incidents against this specific community any other questions on this topic