'Problematic': VPD touts crime drop days before Vancouver election, raising questions about timing

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“Under Mayor Ken Sim and ABC Vancouver, the city has fully funded both the Vancouver Police Department and Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services for the first time in decades,” the party’s website reads, linking increased police investment to a decline in violent crime in the Downtown Eastside, Gastown, Chinatown and Strathcona.

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The Vancouver Police Department’s net operating budget rose from $344.7 million in 2022 to about $497.1 million in 2026. In 2025, council approved $5 million in one-time funding for Task Force Barrage, which targets violent offenders, organized crime and street disorder in the Downtown Eastside. In 2026, council approved another $2.8 million for District 5, a new policing district covering the Downtown Eastside, Gastown, Hastings Crossing and Chinatown.

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Green party mayoral candidate Pete Fry, a sitting city councillor, said the increase in police spending has come with trade-offs, including cuts to other municipal services that also affect public safety.

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“We’ve seen cuts to things like sex-worker safety equity. We’ve seen cuts to intimate-partner violence programs. We’ve seen cuts to community services,” Fry told Postmedia on Thursday.

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Prest said the issue goes beyond the timing of Thursday’s announcement. By publicly making the case for police funding, he said, the police department risks stepping into a political debate that should be led by elected officials.

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“It turns around the lines of accountability, where it gives the police an ability to hold politicians to account as opposed to having politicians, through the police board, and through the province and through the city council through budgets, deciding what the policing priorities of the city ought to be.”

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Police have traditionally been expected to remain politically neutral as institutions, Prest said, while individual officers are free to participate in politics or run for office.

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“The police should not be directing politicians. And that’s what this amounts to — an attempt to try to influence political decision-making.”

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Prest also questioned whether Vancouver’s declining crime can be attributed primarily to local policing investments, noting that crime rates have fallen across Canada and elsewhere for more than a generation.

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“So, it’s a very selective framing that tends to be quick and convenient for an argument that a certain element of the civil service wants to make.”

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The debate over the use of crime statistics comes against a backdrop of ties between ABC and the Vancouver Police Union.

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In the months leading up to the 2022 municipal election, the Vancouver Police Department issued a series of news releases highlighting seemingly random or unprovoked attacks, including several stranger assaults.

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The releases came during an ABC party campaign in which public safety was becoming a major political issue. That year also marked a significant break from tradition for the Vancouver Police Union, which endorsed a mayoral candidate — Ken Sim — for the first time in its history.

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On Oct. 5, 2022, the union endorsed Sim for mayor and urged voters to elect an ABC majority, saying public safety was “the number one issue” in that year’s civic election and that electing Sim and an ABC majority would ensure police and other front-line responders had the resources they needed.

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Sim went on to win the mayor’s race, and ABC won a majority on council.