On Friday November 12, the last day of COP26, a peaceful rally of several hundred for climate justice was disrupted by over-the-top action of the Vancouver Police Department.
An Indigenous man, as part of a ceremony, placed red handprints, representing Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, on the building that houses Canada’s Department of Environment and Climate Change, the focus of the rally. He was joined by three young non-Indigenous people, who the cops arrested. The police could have ignored the issue – it was washable paint! If, being police, they felt the desire to act hard, they could have simply given the three a caution or warning.
An increasing number of police arrived on the scene, encircling the young people. The rally organizers attempted to negotiate with the police to defuse the situation ─ the police refused. Many of those at the rally gathered around the police barricade, chanting, “Let them go!” The police, lacking any sense of proportion or common sense, refused, instead called for reinforcements. At least 25 police on bicycles and in cars and vans responded to this incident.
As the police moved to take the three youth away, they pushed and shoved, with both their hands and their bicycles. I was standing, quietly observing, when a police officer pushed me hard. When I objected to being mistreated, he ignored me and instead pushed again, harder. I couldn’t see his number so have no idea of his identity. The crowd remained peaceful. Only the police were aggressive and violent.
After the rally re-grouped outside the police station, the three young people were released a few hours later.
It is an astonishing statement of the VPD’s priorities that at least 25 police are sent to deal with some washable paint. This is the same police department that claims they need more funds, who objected when Vancouver Council voted not to increase their budget, at a time when almost every other city department was facing cuts. The police already receive $340.9 million a year, over 21 percent of the city’s total budget.
This is the same police force that did nothing about mass murderer Robert Pickton for years. After his arrest, Pickton admitted to killing 49 women. For years, from at least 1995, people in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside were worried about a mass murderer preying on women and there was widespread suspicion about Pickton, and even evidence. Pickton was charged with attempted murder in 1997, but the charge was dropped. He was only finally arrested in 2002.
Police give inordinate attention to so-called “damage” of property and often ignore the violence that women experience from partners or predators. The VPD failed the women Pickton murdered, due to the police’s prejudice and deep-seated bias. The women were mostly poor and Indigenous, some were sex workers and drug users; in the eyes of Vancouver’s police, they were not worth worrying about.
It took only a few minutes for at least 25 police to turn up to arrest three young people for putting washable paint on a building. It took years for Vancouver’s police to act on mass murder. Clearly Vancouver’s police department think washable paint on a building is a worse crime than murdering poor women.
