Transcript
Speaker: I'm Jane Williams, this is the Red Eye Podcast, produced at the studios of Vancouver Cooperative Radio. In our episode today, Laurent Chisholm talks with Chrissy Brett and Anna Cooper about how the police acted during the recent eviction of homeless campers near Crab Park.
Speaker: Earlier this month, the Vancouver Port Authority was granted an injunction against people living in a tent city near Crab Park. Many of those homeless campers had already been displaced from Oppenheimer Park in the Downtown Eastside. Following the injunction, the homeless residents moved from a parking lot to a nearby gravel lot.
Speaker: On June 16, Vancouver Police arrived at 6am to wake up residents and force them to move once again. By the end of the day, all of the homeless residents were forced to leave and 46 people were arrested for civil contempt of court. Many of the homeless people have now moved to Strathcona Park to try to create a tent city and community there.
Speaker: Chrissy Brett was an organizer and spokesperson for the Crab Park encampment and Oppenheimer before that. She was a victim of the 60 scoop and is from the New Hawk Nation. Anna Cooper is a staff lawyer on homelessness at Pivot Legal Society and they join me now. Chrissy, tell us about the camp and what was going on there before the police came to evict people. It was way better than
Speaker: What was at Oppenheimer, I find organic encampments that don't have a lot of leadership or community support, really struggle with holding together a community as they're people with a lot less tools. So when you create an Indigenous -led encampment, it just gives people more guidelines of how to be better neighbors and community members.
Speaker: So we thought that it might be one of the perfect places. There was no residence around the encampment. There were people that were across the road and a couple of railway tracks and large fences with barbed wire on them. So it wasn't like there was a huge direct impact on anyone close and it was an empty parking lot.
Speaker: that I personally thought was an extension of Crab Park, but apparently it's an empty parking lot that it's owned by the port. Describe what happened at 6 a .m. the morning police arrived at the park to evict campers. It was pretty intense. I was awoken, had no idea what time it was, was told that the police had moved in.
Speaker: They were coming in with force. By the time I got out of my tent, there was a large group of officers on the other side of the fence with grinders and bolt cutters to undo the fence that we had chain shut. We had opened the gate by just taking off the gate off a tinge.
Speaker: so that we weren't actually breaking anything and that it was still intact. And they chose to grind right through it. And as I tried to hold the gate together, they said that if I continue to do so, I would be under arrest.
Speaker: knowing that somebody had to lead some of the homeless people out, I realized that was probably not our best option. And so one of our allies stepped in my place and held that gate together just to show that residents had people that were there to support them no matter what was going on. And that gentleman was arrested and then released without charges.
Speaker: Now this is six o 'clock in the morning. Was it a surprise to you to have the VPD worked with you to say they were coming? Um, they worked with us somewhat. They arrived on Friday and done protocol and had a conversation. They left, let us know that they would get back to us. And they told us that they would come in.
Speaker: any time after Sunday at midnight to affect just the Lot 5, which was the paved parking lot and the small grassy area away from Crab Park. And so looking at that, we asked them looking at the weather that maybe Tuesday or Wednesday would give us a bit more time to get organized, figure out how things were going to go, and they came
Speaker: back saying that they would continue the conversation on Saturday and then became really involved with the Black Lives Matter. And so they didn't come back on Saturdays. So I felt like a move to the parking lot that was not a part of the court injunction would maybe give time for the city to really push the federal government to come forward and be a part of this conversation as well as BC Housing
Speaker: or the city, I'm not sure which, had already approached the port to put in trailers in the fenced encampment that we had moved to. So I figured it might be a good pressure point to tell the port that
Speaker: rather than evicting people to nowhere that maybe they should reconsider this option of looking at trailers being placed in there similar to the NIMO and expected that it would open up conversation that we would still probably have to move, but it would give people an extra few days. What did the police say the reason was for forcing the homeless people to leave right then and there?
Speaker: Yeah, I think so few things. Firstly, I received a copy of an email that some organizers did send to
Speaker: the Deputy Chief of the VPD asking for a timeline saying that people were trying to find alternative arrangements and housing, they received no response. There was a really concerted effort to get details of when enforcement might happen so that people could, you know, if they had somewhere to go, so they had a timeline to pack up or to try and get into housing, also to give advocates time to lobby with BC Housing and the province and the city. And there was simply no response and no engagement with those requests.
Speaker: And there was a decision to show up at 6 a .m. When I got to the site, I asked numerous BPD officers, including site supervisors, why they were choosing to enforce in that way, why they weren't giving people more time, why they weren't using their power and position to actually lean on government actors to provide housing.
Speaker: so that they weren't displacing people to nowhere. And I didn't receive any answer other than saying that they were enforcing the court order. And the court order, even at its most strict reading, gave the VPD a full two weeks to enforce. There were still 12 days left.
Speaker: There was absolutely no need to act on the day they did. And there was nothing in that order that would make them show up en masse at 6am in a way that was really scary and terrifying and start threatening people with arrest if they didn't leave. So there was no justification for that that was provided.
Speaker: And there are no enforcement order to that. So I do family court support and a lot of sort of lands disputes on reserve and the police always fall back to if there's no enforcement order attached to the eviction or attached to the custody order that they refuse to enforce. So because it's a civil matter and it needs to be dealt with in court and they need
Speaker: some instruction of where to take people, how far to take them, and what that looks like at Super Intensity in Victoria in 2015 -2016.
Speaker: The police department refused to follow through with taking people off without an enforcement order, which forced the province into actually coming up with housing. So then they arrived at the site and were there saying they were enforcing that order. Did they provide residents with directions about where they could find housing or where they could go?
Speaker: They gave a sheet with four numbers on it. None of those numbers were aware that their numbers were being put on a sheet or that they were being asked to provide housing or any type of
Speaker: housing support to people that were being given these numbers. Portland Hotel Society's enhanced homeless outreach were on site later on in the day and they hadn't been told that they needed to step up their game and be prepared to try and house people or at least the most vulnerable people that morning and had no idea their head offices like number was put on the paper and they had no clue
Speaker: There was no actual engagement in trying to give people a chance. And the weekend that they did give us till Sunday at midnight ensured that we could not create any type of engagement with any organization that is closed on the weekend to try and find emergency housing or shelter or anything that would protect our most vulnerable within our community.
Speaker: Anna, you were involved as a legal observer. How did the VPD officers treat lawyers on the site who were there to observe?
Speaker: So I'd say it was a mixed reaction. You know, there was a few officers who'd clearly been designated as like the friendly liaison officers, but it's also important to note that they were not the officers who were making any of the decisions. So the officers were actually being more friendly with residents and with legal observers, were not officers who had any decision making power.
Speaker: The officers who I engaged with and other lawyers on the site engaged with who were actually site supervisors were overwhelmingly very dismissive, very condescending, at times outright intimidating.
Speaker: When I was trying to speak with one of the more senior officers about the fact that they were handing out these sheets and they weren't providing, they were telling people that there were resources and there weren't any resources actually available, that officer stepped within an inch of my face and got loud just in order to be physically intimidating. That happened and similar things happened with a number of the other lawyers on site. There was just this very intense reaction of
Speaker: anger and harassment towards anybody who is questioning their authority, even when those questions were just about basic resource provision or about the rationale for how they were carrying out operations.
Speaker: Now, I'm interested in both of your thoughts on this. There have been more and more calls to defund the police everywhere in the face of systemic racism and other issues with police relations with the community. What are your thoughts about what this episode shows us about the role and behavior of Vancouver police on that day? I think police across the board need a major
Speaker: restructuring would mean that we'd be redirecting some of those funds in ensuring that people are trained in coming up with a process that actually protects people. Defunding some of the more military toys that the police departments have, I think is something that I'm in support of. But until there's actual housing and treatment and detox and possible decriminalization,
Speaker: of illegal drugs until there's something else. I don't want to see some of those people that saw an enact mental health team have to deal with the same officers we were dealing with on site. So I don't want to see a Riverview hospital thing put in place and saying let's defund everything without having something in place to replace it.
Speaker: like treatment centers and detox and not just housing first, but inclusive things that are second and third stage housing and sober housing for elders and people that don't have any barriers. Right now, the only place you can get housing or shelter or low barrier shelters and SROs. That kind of two things I would add to everything that Chrissy just said, which I completely agree with is
Speaker: You know, in this bigger kind of movement to defund police, you know, one of the clear comments coming both from people within the Black Lives Matter movements, but also has been coming from indigenous folks for a really long time is, you know, cops don't keep us safe. We keep us safe. There's nothing about the BPD's actions in decamping Crab Park that actually increased community safety. There's no level in which it increased community safety. It actively increased harm and put people at greater risk.
Speaker: And it's a really good example of how modern policing is an extension of its colonial foundations. It is there to protect property of largely settler landholders over the rights of indigenous peoples and other peoples, including everyone who's homeless right now.
Speaker: Those are state priorities and those are policing priorities and that's how they're being used. And in so much as police departments are saying that they want to be part of fixing this problem, it's really hard to see how that can happen when they are the ones actively enforcing state power to put people at greater risk.
Speaker: Thank you so much, both of you, for joining me today and talking with me about these really, really important issues. Thank you so much, Lorraine. Thank you. I've been speaking with Chrissy Brett, an organizer and spokesperson for the Crab Park Encampment and Oppenheimer before that. Anna Cooper is a staff lawyer on homelessness at Pivot Legal Society. The Red Eye podcast is produced at the studios of Vancouver Co -op Radio.
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