It is hard to appreciate just how much policing has changed for the better in Vancouver during Chief Jim Chu’s tenure unless you realize where we started.
Just under eight years ago his predecessor Jamie Graham vacated the office after his request to extend his five-year contract so he could be there for the 2010 Olympics was turned down by the police board. His troops may have thought he was a great leader, but he had few fans elsewhere.
In his opening days Graham had to deal with the occupation by Downtown Eastside residents of the long-vacant Woodwards building. They were demanding the space be developed for social housing.
What ensued would set the tone for Graham’s reign.
Pivot Legal Society director lawyer John Richardson, who represented the protesters, was arrested and charged with obstruction of justice for failing to consent to a strip search.
Graham dismissed Pivot storefront lawyers as nothing more than a “protest group.” Journalists covering the occupation were threatened with arrest if they didn’t leave the scene. To Graham all journalists were “predatory media.”
He was dismissive of the growing number of complaints against the police, setting himself up as the sole arbiter and only occasionally disciplining an officer.
When the Police Complaints Commissioner Dirk Ryneveld weighed in to investigate issues raised by Pivot, Graham would accuse him of being “manipulated” by the “protest group.”
When the RCMP investigated complaints against the VPD and found almost a dozen were valid, Graham sat on the results and conducted his own $200,000 internal investigation, which exonerated his department.
An exasperated Ryneveld noted the “outright resistance” by Graham and his officers to any external investigation, including the one conducted by the RCMP.
Ryneveld would find Graham guilty of “discreditable conduct.”
In the end, Graham’s difficult relationship with Vancouver’s city manager Judy Rogers and mayor Sam Sullivan, who was also chair of the police board, became even more strained; Graham left a target of a human profile shot full of holes on Rogers’ desk that totally freaked Rogers out. She saw it as a threat and went scurrying down to Sullivan’s office to complain.
All in all, the refusal to extend his contract came as no surprise.
Hiring then Deputy Chief Jim Chu to replace him was greeted with some relief.
The first non-white person to ever hold the position, a Chinese guy who emigrated with his parents from Shanghai when he was just a kid and grew up on Vancouver’s East Side, seemed like a great fit from day one.
But he had his work cut out for him. Chu’s tenure began in the shadow of the fallout from the massive police failure surrounding the missing and murdered women on the Downtown Eastside.
One of his first moves was to have breakfast with former Pivot leaders John Richardson and David Eby. He apologized for the cops’ conduct that led to dozens of complaints.
Chu’s way of dealing with protesters at the 2010 Olympics was in stark contrast to the way baton-swinging Toronto cops handled the G20 Summit there.
Of course, there was the Stanley Cup Riot where Chu apologized (something Graham would never do) for underestimating the crowds and being slow to act. Some 300 charges were eventually laid. There were no complaints against the cops for their conduct.
While Ottawa has been advancing its hard line on crime agenda, Vancouver cops under Chu have chosen a more moderate path. They are basically ignoring Bill C-36, the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, which critics say puts the lives of sex trade workers at greater risk.
Instead Chu and his cops are working with sex trade worker advocates at the Wish Drop-In Centre. They set up Sisterwatch to combat violence against women on the Downtown East Side.
Busting marijuana dispensers is not a priority unless they serve minors; nor is busting addicts in possession of illegal drugs on their way to InSite to shoot up.
All is not perfect but advocacy groups previously ignored or disparaged, from the mentally ill to First Nations to addicts, will tell you during the time Jim Chu has been chief they have been more engaged.
And that is why, when Jim Chu steps down in the next few months, he will be missed.
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