The day before Police Chief Jim Chu announced he will retire this spring from a 36-year career with the Vancouver Police Department, he sat down to lunch with a table of strangers in the Carnegie Centre at Main and Hastings.
Kelvin Bee, a residential school survivor, and Jasper Joseph, who has challenged authority since he was a kid, were two of Chu’s lunch mates. They all seemed to get along, despite the conflicting histories of the three men.
“I’ve got to commend the chief with taking a chance with our women who still might be in the [sex] trade and with people that are addicted with alcohol or drugs — some of them even coming in here under the influence,” Bee told the Courier after Chu left the table to lead a raffle draw for 80 of his guests at the fourth “Lunch with the Chief” at the Carnegie.
Eight other tables at the centre were occupied by a mix of police officers and Downtown Eastside residents, all there to get to know each other, ask and answer tough questions and keep the conversation moving along well enough to encourage another lunch date.
It was Joseph’s second luncheon.
“I thought this was going to be one of those places where I was going to get uncomfortable,” he said after finishing his sandwich. “I don’t like people in authority. Whether they shake my hand or not, or smile, I have a hard time with it. I’ve been that way since I was a kid. But my emotions today are more different than they used to be. I can shake [a police officer’s] hand now and feel comfortable around them and not feel like they’re going to arrest me.”
It’s a revealing quote that Chu would consider a gain — a term he used at his news conference last Friday when asked about his legacy in the Downtown Eastside and whether his seven-and-a-half years of leadership has improved relationships between the VPD and residents.
With the bungling of the missing and murdered women investigation, the unprecedented ticketing of low-income residents for jaywalking and vending and incidents of police using excessive force on residents, Chu has had to answer for his department’s failures and wrongdoing in the low-income neighbourhood.
“In policing, there’s never a time to declare victory,” he told reporters at the Cambie Street police station. “You’re always looking if you’re moving in the right direction. Are things improving at the right pace? And then, as you have a gain, you want to work harder to get more gains. So we’re going to continue to work with all our partners, including those in the Downtown Eastside, to assure them that we care about safety for every person in Vancouver.”
While observers of the 55-year-old Chu's tenure as chief may point to his leadership during the 2010 Winter Olympics or his department's response to the Stanley Cup riot in 2011 as hallmarks of his career, his record in the Downtown Eastside brings a more guarded reaction from residents and agencies who have watched the VPD leader's moves in the community.
"We have a long way to go, but we're taking steps forward and doing the work that needs to be done for safety in this community," said Mona Woodward, former executive director of the Aboriginal Front Door Society, as she left the luncheon. "That's why there was such outrage down here before because nothing was being done."
Neighbourhood watch
Chu’s commitment to improve relationships in the Downtown Eastside was evident more than four years ago when officers and women from the neighbourhood created Sisterwatch, an initiative aimed at preventing violence against women.
Woodward is co-chairperson of Sisterwatch but pointed out the crime prevention network probably wouldn't have formed had it not been for a tragedy: her niece, 22-year-old Ashley Machiskinic, fell to her death Sept. 15, 2010 from a room at the back of the Regent Hotel.
The death led to Woodward and a group of women occupying the then-police headquarters at 312 Main St. to pressure Chu and his officers to investigate what they believed to be a murder.
Chu called and attended a town hall meeting, which led to the creation of Sisterwatch and regular meetings with residents. The luncheons, which began last year, are an extension of those initiatives. Investigators, meanwhile, continue to treat Machiskinic's death as a "sudden death" file, according to the chief.
"The positive thing is that Ashley didn't die in vain, right?" Woodward said of the community's push for better relations with the VPD. "That from her death something beautiful happened."
At his news conference Friday, Chu said the work of Sisterwatch has led to witnesses and victims of crime confiding in police and sharing information that has helped capture criminals. In another first for the VPD, the chief and several police officers have been regular participants in the Missing Women Memorial March held in February each year.
But with steps forward have come steps backward.
Back in June 2010, one of Chu’s officers, Const. Taylor Robinson, was captured on video footage shoving Sandy Davidsen, who has cerebral palsy, to the ground on East Hastings. Robinson, who had graduated from the Justice Institute six months before the incident, was suspended without pay for six days. He claimed Davidsen was going for his gun but later apologized for the incident and was transferred to another district.
Chu reacted immediately, imposing a mandatory policy that stated rookies would no longer be deployed in the Downtown Eastside. The new policy requires only officers with a minimum of two years’ experience to be considered to work the beat in the neighbourhood.
Watching Chu and the department closely over the years in the Downtown Eastside has been the Pivot Legal Society, which has lodged complaints against officers and called for policy changes, including stopping the ticketing of low-income residents.
Pivot lawyer Douglas King, who acted on behalf of Davidsen in the Robinson case, said Chu may have built better relationships with service providers in the Downtown Eastside but confrontations between police and officers continue.
“If you’re still giving out tickets for jaywalking, if you’re still hounding people as they walk down the street, you’re still not going to improve that relationship,” King told the Courier. “So I think there’s a lack of understanding of what the core issue is.”
That said, King added, the legal society saw some positive moves by the VPD under Chu’s leadership, including backing off on the enforcement of sex trade workers to focus on prevention of violence. The VPD continues to be supporters of the Insite supervised drug injection site, too, King noted.
King acknowledged one of the first moves Chu made when he became chief was to have breakfast with former Pivot leaders John Richardson and David Eby, where he apologized for officers’ conduct that led to 52 complaints against the VPD.
“Our relationship with the VPD is so much better under chief Chu than it was under [Police Chief Jamie] Graham,” King said. (Graham once told the Courier that Pivot had no credibility as an organization). “It was actively hostile with chief Graham. It’s been a world of difference and we hope it’s going to stay that way with whoever is going to replace him.”
Public relations
But Chu’s work outside the Downtown Eastside, particularly during the 2010 Winter Olympics, may be more familiar to people living in other parts of the city and across the country.
Using a so-called meet-and-greet style of policing, which arguably saw more cops at any time in the force’s history pose for photographs with tourists, the VPD welcomed hundreds of thousands of people to the city during the Winter Games. There were few skirmishes, although there were protests and arrests.
Chu’s non-aggressive approach to the Occupy protest at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2011 and last year’s Oppenheimer Park tent city, where campers eventually left both properties without a clash with police, earned high praise from Mayor Gregor Robertson and civil liberties’ watchdogs.
But the recreational hockey player’s biggest test came in June 2011 when the Vancouver Canucks lost Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final to the Boston Bruins at Rogers Arena. Hundreds of people went on a rampage downtown, burning vehicles, looting stores and assaulting police officers. Chu and his department were criticized for allowing the riot to happen, although many people thanked the VPD for the work they did that night, covering a cruiser in yellow sticky thank-you notes the next day and overwhelming VPD email inboxes and mailboxes with well wishes.
“We assured the citizens of Vancouver that we would hold the rioters accountable,” said Chu, recalling the fallout from the riot. “I know there was some criticism about us taking some time. As I said, we want do it fast, we want to do it right but if we couldn’t do both, we would do it right. I think time has vindicated our decision to do it right. We’re over 300 people charged. That’s the largest number of people charged out of one incident in Canadian history.”
That same year, Chu was rocked by the embarrassing and shocking news that one of his own officers was charged with selling marijuana. At the time, Chu told the Courier, it was his worst day on the job. Const. Peter Hodson was fired and served time in prison.
“It was a bad day but then it was a good day,” he said at the time. “The bad day was one officer violated the trust we placed in him. The good day was 30 other officers said they would investigate, appear in court, no problem. They were resourceful, energetic, committed and they got significant amounts of evidence to prove that he was a rogue cop.”
Robertson, who joined Chu at Friday’s news conference, credited the chief and his leadership for the steady drop in crime across the city, pointing out how police diffused a gang war in 2008 and 2009. Property crime continues to plummet and homicides are at an all-time low, Robertson added.
“He and his team have achieved in succeeding again and again in achieving remarkable successes for our city,” said the mayor, who doubles as chairperson of the police board, which conducts annual performance reviews of the chief.
Robertson applauded the chief’s ongoing efforts to shine the light on the mental health crisis in Vancouver, where police are often the first responders to incidents involving people in need of treatment for their illnesses. In recent years, the mayor and the chief have joined together to lobby the provincial and federal governments for better treatment, services and facilities for the mentally ill.
“A special thank you to Jim for his very brave leadership on mental health and I know his commitment on that is something that runs very deep in the Vancouver Police Department,” Robertson said.
Chu was hired under a police board led by then-mayor Sam Sullivan. It will now be up to Robertson and the board to choose a successor, which will include a Canada-wide search for a candidate. The job pays well, with Chu earning more than $300,000 a year in recent years.
“These are big shoes to fill, there are some incredible candidates within the department,” the mayor said. “We look forward to them being in the mix and we’ll also open our doors across the country to make sure we’ve done everything to find the next best chief for Vancouver.”
Political football
So what’s Chu’s next move?
While Chu reasoned at the news conference that his early departure from his contract was to give one of his deputy chiefs a shot at the top job, Chu found himself deflecting questions about a possible federal run in politics.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do next,” said Chu, whose contract was set to expire in 2017. “Other than some time off, I don’t know what the future entails. I didn’t want to be actively looking for the next step while I’m serving as chief.”
Chu acknowledged that political parties have approached him over the years but he declined offers. He said he will give the same answer until he retires, which is scheduled for the spring but could be later if the police board hasn’t found his successor.
He is no stranger to politicians or how the world of politics works: As chief, he’s met with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and led tours of the city and Downtown Eastside with federal ministers. Chu has made contacts across the country as head of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and lobbied for progressive changes related to marijuana possession such as ticketing instead of enforcement. And he’s made national news for a VPD-led program dubbed “Con-Air” that flies criminals back to cities where they are wanted on outstanding warrants.
His successor will likely need to possess the same campaigning style, which was directed by a police board that wanted Chu to speak out and be heard when issues such as the city’s mental health crisis is directly affecting policing; the VPD’s “Lost in Transition” report on the mental health crisis in 2008 was an example. Several times during the news conference, Chu made it clear that the police board should look within the VPD’s senior ranks for the next chief.
Three deputy chiefs — Warren Lemcke, Adam Palmer and Doug LePard — work under Chu, who won the job in June 2007 after Jamie Graham retired. Chu noted his executive members are being actively recruited for jobs with other police departments.
“It would be a shame for this organization if one or two of these senior leaders left without the opportunity to compete to be police chief in the best city in the world in the best police agency in the world,” he said. “For me to step aside right now, it gives those talented senior executives who the police board have been directing me to develop, mentor and coach the opportunity to be a leader in this organization.”
In an interview following the news conference, LePard, 53, said he is thinking about pursuing the job. The Courier was unable to reach Lemcke and Palmer before deadline.
“It’s a very important job and it’s not a decision that I would make lightly,” said LePard, who praised Chu for his leadership and relationships he established with people in the city, including in the Downtown Eastside where LePard joined the chief last Thursday at the luncheon.
Next chapter
Whether LePard or some other candidate becomes Chu's successor, that person will undoubtedly have to sell the police board on how he or she will handle the challenges of policing the Downtown Eastside.
Chu appears to have set a precedent, with no other chief in recent memory hosting regular lunches with sex trade workers, drug users and homeless people — and giving out door prizes such as Tim Horton's gift cards, jewelry and rain ponchos to his guests.
Asked about this legacy as he left the luncheon, Chu credited the work of fellow officers for the relationships they've established with residents. Then he finished with this:
“Well,” he said. “I’m around at a lot of other venues in the city, as well. But this is important for the police department.”
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