Colleen Hardwick releases TEAM public safety plan

Colleen Hardwick, the mayoral candidate for TEAM for a Livable Vancouver, has released her party’s public safety plan ahead of the municipal election. In the announcement, she criticized Mayor Ken Sim’s proposed non-binding public safety plebiscite.

Hardwick said Sim was elected four years ago after promising to restore public safety and that Vancouver residents need a serious plan and a City Hall ready to act, rather than another ballot question. In August, ABC Vancouver’s majority on Vancouver City Council approved Sim’s plebiscite, which will ask voters about public hard-drug use and the establishment of a major mental health and addictions treatment facility at the old St. Paul’s Hospital site.

TEAM’s plan has four elements: a residents’ safety action plan, a community-first policing approach, a violence-against-women prevention strategy and what it describes as a new approach to addiction. The party said the plan would support stronger enforcement in public spaces and speed access to treatment and recovery.

Its residents’ safety plan would target repeat offenders, reject open drug use in shared public spaces, increase enforcement against street disorder, drug trafficking and recurring property crime, and improve neighbourhood-level crime reporting. TEAM said its policing approach would strengthen district policing, improve co-ordination with neighbourhoods and businesses, and create a victims’ response standard to improve communication after crimes are reported.

The party said it would establish an intimate-violence task force, strengthen victim services and risk assessment, increase prevention education and appoint a City Women’s Safety Lead. It also proposed expanding treatment and recovery-oriented housing, creating an immediate treatment-and-recovery pathway with Vancouver Coastal Health, and working with the Province to expand detox, treatment, recovery and secure-care capacity. TEAM said it would audit the Downtown Eastside to improve accountability for public spending.

Other major municipal contenders have taken different approaches. Vote Vancouver mayoral candidate and city councillor Rebecca Bligh released platform pillars last week that did not include public safety. Vancouver Liberals mayoral candidate Kareem Allam released a plan on Sept. 17 that he said would target high-level organized crime as well as street-level crime. ABC Vancouver and incumbent Mayor Ken Sim are to release their election platform on Monday, Sept. 21, while Green Party mayoral candidate Pete Fry has not yet released a public safety plan. Voting day is Oct. 17.