After almost eight years as head of the Vancouver Police Department, where he was in charge during the 2010 Olympics and the Stanley Cup riot, Jim Chu announced Friday that he will retire in the spring.
But while the 36-year veteran reasoned at a 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,” he told reporters at the VPD’s Cambie Street station. “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, 55, 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 Vancouver 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 and campaigned for services and facilities to treat the mentally ill.
His successor will likely need to possess the same focus, 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. 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, whose contract was to expire in 2017, 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 the chief on Thursday held his fourth luncheon with residents at the Carnegie Centre.
One of the biggest challenges for Chu and the succession of chiefs that have led the VPD has been to improve the relationship between the police and Downtown Eastside 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,” said the chief in response to the Courier’s question about the VPD’s image in the Downtown Eastside. “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.”
Chu pointed to one of those gains as the Sisterwatch program that officers and women in the Downtown Eastside created more than four years ago in an effort to prevent violence against women. Chu said that relationship has led to members of the community helping witnesses and victims of crime to provide information to police to capture criminals. The chief and several police officers have also 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 apologized for the incident and was transferred to another district.
Chu reacted immediately, approving 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 brought 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 has seen 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 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 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.”
With the criticism has come praise.
Chu led the department during the 2010 Winter Olympics, where the city welcomed hundreds of thousands of people. There were few skirmishes with police, although there were protests and arrests. His non-aggressive approach to the Occupy protest at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2011 and last year's Oppenheimer tent city, where protesters eventually left both properties without a clash with police, earned praise from Mayor Gregor Robertson and civil liberties' watchdogs.
Chu’s biggest test as chief came with the Stanley Cup riot in 2011 where hundreds of people went on a rampage in the city, 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.
“We assured the citizens of Vancouver that we would hold the rioters accountable,” Chu said at the news conference. “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 the news conference, credited the chief and his leadership for the steady drop in crime across the city, pointing out how the police diffused a gang war in 2008 and 2009. Homicides are also 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.”
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