VicPD’s draft 2020 budget includes the “Potential return of the School Resource Officers,” and it’s time those with power over the program started asking why the police are allowed anywhere near the public school system.
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Victoria City Council is considering a report about whether one of the Pandora Avenue fences will stay up, because they think it might be too tall and too spiky. No matter what size it is, it won’t change its intent.
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In February, the principal of Vic High responded to a complaint about drug use in Spring Ridge Commons by telling his colleagues the Commons was “a cesspool.” Later that same week, SD61 began a months-long project to remove furniture and seating in the Commons, to displace homeless people and people who use drugs.
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Nobody loves defensive architecture quite like Fort Street. Outside of business hours, locked gates shut off empty alcoves, blocking sheltered and semi-private spaces from people who might otherwise use them overnight.
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Locked gates and a “No Public Access” sign have been added to the potpourri of displacement at the 836 Yates walkway. Future plans for the development next door include “decorative” defensive architecture.
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Two years ago this month I wrote about some un-sleepable benches that were proposed for a new development at Douglas and Pandora. Those defensive designs have turned into defensive reality.
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Building on some Internet math, StatsCan data, and an average pee time of 21 seconds and 6.5 pees per day, about 136 people are peeing in Victoria at any given time. That’s a lot of people, which is one of the reasons it’s sad that the city lost a low-barrier washroom in April.
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Outside Island Health’s doors at 1250 Quadra Street, rocks are cemented in place. A “Private Property” sign, which threatens arrest for anyone who lingers, has been placed above the rocks.
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One of the first posts I wrote for this site was about the city’s hostile benches, where arm rests are welded or bolted on to stop people from lying down. We’ve got a lot of them, and they’re all gross. But they don’t have to be.
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A review of one month of VicPD street check reports shows that officers disproportionately street check Indigenous individuals and members of the street community. The reports also include at least one street check that would appear to constitute police misconduct if it were held to Ontario’s new street check rules; officers policing sex work in a way that contradicts VicPD’s public statements; and officers using people’s fear of police to initiate processes that lead to street checks.
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England is having a national conversation right now about fake public space, where more and more seemingly public spaces are actually owned by private companies. That conversation isn’t happening in Victoria, but it should be.
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In 2014, Victoria, B.C. police officers street checked the city’s population at a higher rate than any other jurisdiction in Canada, with the exception of Edmonton. Victoria police performed 3,059 street checks in 2014, equivalent to 3.18 per cent of Victoria and Esquimalt’s 2011 census population. For Canadian cities where I could find statistics, that made Victoria’s street check rate the second-highest in the country.
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