 Good morning everyone thank you for your patience really appreciate it as you know we're gonna be providing an update today on the incident that happened in downtown yesterday the stabbing we will have Mayor Ken Sim followed by Chief Adam Palmer here we'll start with Mayor Ken Sim he'll be saying a few remarks followed by Chief Palmer and then we'll open it up for question period okay so I'd now like to call up Mayor Sim. Alright good afternoon everyone thank you for being here today and before I get started I would like to acknowledge that we are hosting today's press conference on the unseated territories of the Musqueam the Squamish and the Swilletooth First Nations and I do want to thank them for their generosity and their hospitality and the love and care they show this land that we get to live or can play on now over the past few days we've seen a series of troubling incidents and so to the victims of the recent incidents I just want to let you know that our hearts and our thoughts are with you and to the people of Vancouver I also want to let you know on behalf of council and myself that we understand your anxiety and your concern know that the VPD will not rest until the perpetrators of all these incidents are off the street and to be very clear every person who calls Vancouver home visits our city or who simply wants to enjoy our public safe spaces deserves to feel safe and secure whether you're enjoying a park walking down the street or grabbing a cup of coffee at one of our cafes the safety of Vancouverites and tourists and visitors is non-negotiable I do want to stress that despite the gravity of a couple of the recent incidents in our city I'm relieved thanks to the the swift response of the VPD and our emergency services there were no fatalities when there easily could have been some and as I said public safety is non-negotiable and that's why we've made historic investments into the Vancouver Police Department including the addition of 100 new police officers that's led to safer schools increased officer presence across the city and quicker response times we've begun and we will continue to expand the mental health units that work hand-in-hand with VPD on the streets and in the command centre triage and calls now even with the significant number of proactive actions taken it's important that we acknowledge the gaps in our public safety approach that continue or a lot of these gaps are at a non-minicipal level and my office our councillors we've been in close contact with Minister of Foreign's worth and the Premier's office and let me just tell you they share our commitment to enhancing public safety the reality is though that Vancouver continues to grapple with a mental health crisis that requires an all hands-on approach including the federal government because this is something that we can't just simply arrest our way out of and I do want to acknowledge that the Premier and the Attorney General have been pushing the federal government to change the criminal code to address what we're facing not only in Vancouver but in the region and in the province now we owe it to all Vancouverites and yes to the VPD officers and other officers throughout the region and the province who put their lives on the line every single day to keep us safe we need to give them effective tools to address the challenges that we face today the reality is people are falling through cracks in the system and I say this respectfully there are people on the streets that should be in treatment they should be in recovery in recovery and in some cases they should be in jail and I want to leave you with this more can be done and more has to be done but thanks to the incredible efforts of our VPD Vancouver despite our challenges is still a very safe city stranger attacks are down and there are more officers on our streets than ever before and I want to thank everyone he's been working on these cases and the thousands of officers throughout the region you go about their duties every single day with little or no fanfare and they keep our streets safe so we can live the lives that we do and so with that I just like to say thank you for your service and I'm now going to pass it over to the Chief to make some comments thank you Mayor Sim good afternoon everybody so there's three things I'm going to update you on today three completely unrelated issues happening in the city the first one of course is going to be the incident that happened yesterday in the downtown core of the city which actually encapsulates about five separate incidents that all resulted in the arrest of this person that will be one thing I'm going to talk to you about separately I'm going to talk to you about another incident that occurred at Clark and Hastings around the same time but another part of the city not related whatsoever to the incident in the downtown core and then thirdly I'm going to give you a bit of an update on the Stanley Park sexual assault investigation so my comments will be somewhat lengthy as I cover all of those off today I am here to provide you with an update on the frightening series of unprovoked attacks that occurred yesterday morning in the downtown core they were very public incidents that have attracted a lot of media and public attention it was around noon it was a Wednesday afternoon downtown Vancouver and as you can imagine lots of people around out and about on the streets on a nice day these attacks have understandably led to much discussion about crime and safety in our community and I want to acknowledge the concern and fear that some people may have I also want to commend the brave actions of the Vancouver police officers who were on scene very quickly after the 911 calls these officers provided aid and comfort to the injured victim and also placed themselves in significant danger to arrest an armed suspect investigators from our major crime section have worked for the past 24 hours to collect evidence to piece together the suspects movements prior to his arrest yesterday our investigative team has also learned more about the background of the person that we have arrested what we're learning is concerning and I'm going to tell you about it now I would also like to acknowledge that I am joined today by Deputy Chief Howard Chow who is in charge of our operations division his officers were the officers on scene that dealt with the suspect on location and Deputy Chief Fiona Wilson who is in charge of our investigation division and her major crime detectives have conduct of the investigation so to give you an overview of the main incident I want to talk about today so yesterday Wednesday March 20th 11 53 a.m. Vancouver police officers responded to several 911 calls reporting that a person had been stabbed near the intersection of smith and Canby streets and that a man was chasing people around with a knife multiple officers responded immediately and located the victim a 61 year old man who had been stabbed and was seriously injured as officers tended to the victim other officers flooded the area searched for and located the suspect and took him into custody the arrest was made within minutes of the 911 call a taser was deployed on the suspect during the arrest the victim has received treatment in hospital and we hope that he will recover fully from his physical injuries however the emotional trauma will likely remain for a long time I just want to reiterate that the victim and the suspect in this case are total strangers they have no prior relationship with one another and that my thoughts are with the victim and his family the suspect in this case is a 46 year old man who is known to police and appears to have mental health challenges though he has a history with police we have not had significant dealings with him here in Vancouver we believe he has previously previously spent time in Surrey and Delta after returning to Canada from Thailand in 2022 where he spent time in custody overseas for multiple offenses including breaking into a bank causing damage inside of that premises and overstaying his tourist visa six days ago on March 15th the suspect was released from Fraser Regional Correctional Center on probation after serving a jail sentence for uttering threats against his own family members and also against prominent federal politicians the suspect failed to report to his probation officer yesterday morning in Surrey which is where he is reporting again outside the city of Vancouver and these incidents began to occur yesterday in downtown Vancouver while he was absent from reporting to his probation officer in Surrey now there are a number of secondary incidents connected to this so I'm going to put a little bit of a timeline together for you and sort of map out how this played out in the morning though our investigation is ongoing we now believe that the same man is responsible for five separate violent and unprovoked incidents that unfolded in downtown Vancouver throughout the morning yesterday the first assault occurred at 8 40 a.m when a man was attacked by a stranger while walking near Seymour and West Cordova streets minutes later a 911 caller reported that a man had entered a coffee shop near harbour centre there was a disturbance causing a glass window to be broken and making customers fear for their safety the third incident occurred at about 11 25 a.m a man was walking near main and prior streets and was chased by a stranger who lunged at him with a knife and was yelling at him the victim managed to run away from the attacker and then the main incident as I mentioned at 11 53 our officers took custody of the suspect on Canby street shortly after he was arrested we learned that the suspect was involved in an additional assault which is still under investigation so far at this point Kent Meads M E A D E S 46 years of age has now been charged with assault with a weapon assault uttering threats he is in custody and I expect that more charges will be laid as the investigation unfolds these are extremely serious crimes and nobody should downplay the impact that they have on our community everybody should feel safe when they go to a coffee shop or they head out for a walk on their lunch break in downtown Vancouver and the actions of this one man yesterday have left many in community questioning their sense of safety in our city incidents like the one that happened yesterday are disturbing but I can assure you that despite these challenges Vancouver is a safe city as we've emerged from COVID-19 and normal life has returned we've seen the frequency of unprovoked strange results declined by about 77 percent the Vancouver crime severity index which many of you know is a weighted measure that compares the severity of all criminal incidents occurring in major cities and communities across Canada and in Vancouver that is actually decreased by 16.1 percent over the last five years whereas in Canada overall it has gone up and increased we've also seen a decrease in 2024 on the number of serious assaults occurring in our city support from Vancouver coastal health has resulted in improved and more efficient treatment for people with serious mental health issues many of whom previously had fallen through the cracks suffered and came into more frequent contact with the police throughout the pandemic mayor sims commitment and the city council's commitment to properly fund the Vancouver police department including the addition of 100 new officers and mental health professionals has given us more tools to combat crime and address important public safety issues including more patrol officers in the front lines our metro units which are additional nimble resources we can deploy throughout the city additional officers to supplement our mental health unit and also additional officers in our major crime section and while we're never going to completely eliminate violent crime our rapid response and immediate arrest of the suspect following yesterday's stabbing shows the effectiveness and efficiency of a properly staffed police department but we do still have ongoing concerns about people with at the serious end of the spectrum with mental health issues in our community that could be a risk to public safety and also ongoing discussions about bail reform one thing i do want to say on this particular incident that i just mentioned in the sub incidents that that accompany this this major investigation is that we are looking for additional witnesses any additional victims we think it's possible that other people may have encountered this fellow and perhaps our victims of crime or any bystanders or dash cam video anything that anybody may have that they saw they witnessed they filmed on their phone we need you to please call 604-717-2541 that's 604-717-2541 before we take questions i do want to give you an update on the two other incidents that i mentioned that have occurred in vancouver this week and have resulted in you know further media inquiries and discussions the stanley park stranger attack sexual assault investigation we are still gathering evidence and working towards the identification of the person responsible for what we believe was a sexually motivated stranger attack on a woman in stanley park on the morning of monday march the 18th we continue to have increased police presence in and around stanley park um bicycle foot patrols vehicles and our mounted unit on horseback we have specialized sex crimes investigators forensic experts and crime analysts assigned full time who are reviewing the facts and working with police from other jurisdictions to help identify this suspect there is still much that we can't say due to the sensitive nature of this investigation but i can tell you that the suspect is described as a black or dark skin male in his 20s about five foot seven wearing a dark tuc a running jacket dark pants and is described as clean shaven i know that there were some people some media inquirers were made about the arrest of a suspect i will tell you that um a person was taken in for questioning who is a known sex offender however that has not led to um any evidence to show that he was the person responsible for this incident so this is a very active investigation and we still need to identify the suspect in this serious file again with this file similar to the previous one but there is a different phone number to call we need witnesses anybody with video or anybody that may have any information to please call a vpd investigators at 604 717 4021 that 604 717 4021 the final incident the third incident i want to update you on which is completely unrelated to the previous ones i've spoken about occurred yesterday at clark and hasting street in east vancouver this occurred at the intersection of clark and hastings on the northwest corner and i want to mention this one because um there is some video that's out there some dash cam video that a citizen has provided to some media outlets so i know that some of the media have it it is out on social media as well to me it's what i would call a bit of a bone chilling video um showing um some of the real stressors and challenging and dangerous situations that our officers face every day in this city so yesterday march 20th at around 11 30 in the morning so this was about 23 minutes before the call that happened in the downtown core totally unrelated but the timing was right around the same time multiple people called 911 reporting that a man was waving a knife around near the corner of clark and hastings in east van vpd officers responded when they arrived at the scene a man stepped out onto the street with a knife in his hand approached the officers aggressively and refused commands to drop the knife multiple rounds from a less lethal beanbag shotgun were deployed to stop the suspect as well as a taser none of the officers were injured the suspect was taken to hospital for precaution due to being struck with multiple beanbag rounds by police abul fazi amini that's a b o l f a z i surname is a m i n i 36 years of age has been charged with weapons and assault offenses and he is currently in custody those are my comments and myself and the mayor are happy to take questions yeah well i i can um get the chief to uh elaborate in greater detail but i just want to be very clear uh we can talk about how crime like vancouver is a safer city and it's getting safer and let's acknowledge it doesn't really mean much for people that are victims of crime so i just want to get that out there right now we're you know empathetically we understand what people go through in the fear that it can cause in some circles look we're a big city that's just the reality and uh vancouver is growing by the day and these are big city challenges and so um there will be incidents like this now and in the future and it's uh it's been a big focus of our administration um you know to make a significant investment in the tools that we can invest in as the city and so what what did we do well we made a commitment uh to properly funding the vancouver police department for the first time in 15 years we you know made a push to hire 100 new police officers body worn cameras school liaison officer program um and making the investments in approving budgets so the vpd can work on a lot of proactive uh initiatives that uh you know you don't see behind um like uh in the public but like all the hard work that they uh you know the training they go through um to de-escalate and deal with situations before they become situations or you look at look look at what happened at lord being high school when there was a report of someone walking around with a gun that's a super hot situation um and as a parent i i'd be totally terrified if my kids were out that school and our officers our members at vpd did it did an amazing job reacting to that situation um and everyone was safe and so uh all they gotta say is look we're a big city there will be challenges but when you look at the macro data um there are a lot of cases where you know when you look at the data you know uh you know it is becoming a safer city yeah well thank you i would just like to add a little bit of uh context and perspective on that so it's a good question and i think it's a you know a natural question that you would ask um it is important to note though as i mentioned when we're looking at crime overall the the data is very clear that over the last five years the crime severity and index in vancouver has reduced by 16.1 percent whereas the crime severity index in canada over that same period has gone up by 6.1 percent and also when we're talking about violent crime violent serious violent crimes and assaults year to date in 2024 it's actually down 14 percent across the city it's important to remember though that every day in vancouver vpd officers are responding to about 700 calls for service so even while we're here doing this press conference there's going to be you know a dozen two dozen calls coming in like it's just continuous it never stops like officers are going all over the city lights and siren responding to calls and that's life in a big city it's not you know not not a small town and we are the regional core for the whole you know metro vancouver area so there will be more draw into the big city as to your question about why you wouldn't see more officers down at smith and beady the reason is because there's no need to that was a particular incident that happened in that area that's not a bad area and the suspect that was responsible for that is now in custody in jail so there's not a need to put a whole bunch of officers in an area where there's no you know further crime threat right in that neighborhood chief when you talk to the residents in the area yes i mean these numbers and stats it just blows over them they do does innocent people going about their business yes the numbers are down but we're still talking about roughly two stranger attacks a day on people that is my phone i apologize um two stranger attacks on people a day innocent members of the public they want to know why is a suspect with the kind of history he has why is he out on the street if he poses a risk to the public yeah those are good questions so here's my response for me number one you're right it is concerning for the public and the general public does not no crime stats they don't pay attention to them like why would you it's not in your normal course of you know activity going about your day people just know how they feel when they walk down the street or when they hear you know a major incident happening in communities so i understand that it's concerning and these incidents are concerning for us the number you're right we still have around two a day so it's a lot it's not what we want to have but we have reduced it significantly we've cut it by more than half because we have done projects and put extra resources into it and because we're intelligence led and we're going after people we know that are chronic offenders people that we know have a propensity to do that kind of crime so that is something that we do that's part of our job and that we're responsible for but as to your issue about you know different people walking around in community that may have mental health issues people that maybe have committed crimes and the route some of that stuff you have to realize is not the sole responsibility of the police so you know holding somebody in custody that is up to crown council and the judicial system to hold somebody in custody we recommend people to be held in custody all the time but there's many incidents where people are released and that is out of our hands even though we would like to see them in custody for example this fellow that we just arrested Mr Meads we have made a strong case for him to be remanded in custody and we expect that he will be but ultimately that decision is not the decision of the police just like if somebody is picked up for severe mental health issues and you know i just want to be clear that i don't want to villainize people that have mental health issues because 20 percent of canadians will have mental health issues in their life and there will be people in this room among us that have had mental health issues in their life that will never have any interactions with the police whatsoever and there's a segment of the population that you know we want to see get help and that are in a tough place and we want them to get help from mental health professionals but there's also a segment at the extreme end which are the ones that we will quite often deal with that are scary people and should be probably institutionalized either in some kind of a psychiatric facility or a prison and society should be protected from them so we're dealing with that small group at the high end of the scale but where's the gap there then we understand what your role is as police right you're you're making the arrests but then there's this grand canyon sized gap between the arrest what happens in court you're back out on the street new offenses occur right while innocent people are getting hurt seriously injured yeah well i think the gap comes you know a lot of the stuff we just talked about so bail reform is an issue all across canada and i'll say it's actually an issue that comes up north american wide amongst police services and you know different prosecutorial services and government in all provinces there has been some movement on that by the province of bc to improve that so we are working with them we do bring the concerns to the province that is their area of responsibility and we have seen some positive action there and the mental health side as well like sometimes people are released that we feel should be held in custody or require additional help and again i wanted to just be clear it's really people at the extreme end of the scale it's not the vast majority of people that maybe suffer from mental health issues and i do also want to say that vancouver coastal health have been amazing partners and i don't want to point any fingers at them because they've been amazing to work with and we've got so many partnership cars and great programs in place that we've actually for the cohorts of people that do have common interactions with police and health care we've got so many proactive programs in place now that for those individuals identified we've reduced police calls for service with those cohorts by over 50 percent and hospital visits by over 60 percent so it does work but there's going to be people that will come into vancouver like this fellow yesterday for example in the downtown core that we don't have a lot of history on he spent time overseas he is a canadian he's a bc guy spent time overseas got into some trouble there came back to the metro vancouver area but he was living out in the suburbs he wasn't somebody we would normally interact with in vancouver so that creates challenges when you've got a huge region of over three million people and we've got a police service here for 725,000 people but having the huge influx of people from all over the region so he wasn't high on our radar because we normally don't deal with them it's more in the suburbs they're dealing with them yeah what did you learn so far about what was going through the interaction that you have and i've also posted near sim hard to ignore that so what i will say about the fellow at clarkin hastings that person does not have um any kind of dealings with the police of any significance he's not somebody that is he's definitely not somebody on our radar at all very few dealings you know at all with police anywhere so he's not somebody that's on our radar more um you know peripheral type stuff however there are some mental health issues at play not in vancouver but in another jurisdiction in metro vancouver with that fellow yes keep on uh was means uh on any substances at the time of his arrest yesterday i don't know that i don't um also notice that uh during the arrest i saw his hands were yeah that's the standard technique we do to preserve evidence so when somebody's handcuffed obviously for their safety and the public safety um when we arrest the person there may be evidence on their hands such as blood dna evidence so we put that on there to preserve that evidence so our forensic investigators can obtain that evidence before like he washes his hands or anything like that and i one percent sure what's your specific ask of the federal government you mentioned that you're looking for support what is your specific ask well yeah like um as the chief mentioned you know bail reform there there's a revolving door of you know call it catch or release there there are things that you know we we provide tools to the vancouver police department and they work incredibly hard um to make our streets safe and then you know people are released into the streets and so that's challenging and i think we have to acknowledge that if that's uh if that situation persists we're really wasting a lot of time here um and we'll continue to have more of these incidents and to answer your question um yeah we still have some work to do on hiring the mental health workers but uh and i do want to share two examples one uh i was actually uh on a car 87 88 ride along about four months ago um and we provided resources to that and i can tell you the the mental health nurse working with two police officers how they de-escalated the situation and got someone who's experienced a mental health uh crisis um directed proactively to our health care system um it was quite amazing and secondly while we haven't hit the number of the hiring numbers yet let's talk about effectiveness we do have a person in the command center triage and calls and i forget the number i think um a chief you would probably have them but we've rerouted a lot of calls that shouldn't be which would have been um you know police calls let's say and maybe not the right response and we've triaged them to you know a better uh you know outcome so to speak but adam it's our chief don't want to add anything to that yeah sure so like in that continuum of services that we have for people that are you know dealing with mental health issues in community there are so many things we have in place right now and i know that it's always a topic of discussion about how police interact with people that are suffering from mental health but the continuum now of you know the mode teams which don't involve police which are out there dealing with people in community without any police and then we have the partnership teams that do reactive response to calls and the partnership teams that do proactive response to help people before they come into contact with police or the or the um health care system so we've got those in place we've got information sharing agreements with health care so that we can share data to make sure we're going after the right people to assist them we've got um in calls like this when these are coming into our e-comm center and then also to our operational command center we have a psych nurse now that's working there that is looking at all the calls coming in these are experienced mental health professionals that can make a determination and there's about Howard what is it about eight calls a day that are being diverted something like that in that neighborhood they look at many more than that but about eight per day that they divert out of about the 700 calls that we receive that say no you know this is one where you don't need to send the police we can send you know alternate means of response or an alternate way of dealing with it but these two calls that I just mentioned to you really highlight that there are going to be some calls where mental health is a play both the one of the downtown core and the one of Clark and Hastings that you absolutely need police to respond to because these are violent dangerous people out on the street and you cannot send a psychiatric nurse or a social work with a clipboard to deal with somebody that's waving around a knife and that requires a police response so it's having the right solution to the situation that you're dealing with and we have that continuum of service now in Vancouver Park was given a green light more than a year ago that they say that the city or the park board has come back and rejected it with green months notice what are your what's your response to these calls yeah we have to do work on making Vancouver a fun city and that's really a park board question they have jurisdiction you know it was park board that approved it and it's park board that has to ask themselves the questions why why did they approve it whether other jurisdictions that you know you know weren't consulted so that's really up to park board to answer that question I do think there are pockets a lot of pockets of fun and there are a lot of pockets of culture but yeah let's hit that one head on there's work to be done and so you know we'll do at city council we'll do everything in our control to promote you know fun in the city be it you know what we do with the responsible consumption of alcohol in certain areas getting permits faster you know and supporting live events wherever you can amongst other things Chief I had a question sure you mentioned in the case yeah so I'm not a mental health professional I'm not a doctor but based on what we observed yesterday and based on feedback I'm hearing from our officers they did respond that there appears to be mental health issues at play so I can't give you like a clinical diagnosis but that's the sense that people are getting from dealing with this man so he did serve time at Fraser Regional Correctional Center was released on the 15th and was going into a period of probation but as far as you know why released and timing and what he was in for I think you'll have to follow up with corrections on that thank you