Enforcing ‘community’ through Block Watch

Victoria Council will continue to fund displacement in the name of community-building in 2021.

The city’s defensive architecture guidelines don’t seem to be going anywhere, and its draft budget includes funding hundreds of thousands of dollars in bylaw officers to police city parks, as well as VicPD’s proposed $61 million police budget.

While not as visible as those big-ticket budget items, people continue to actively support the city and VicPD’s displacement project by joining VicPD’s Block Watch and volunteer programs. Those programs directly support a vision of neighbourhoods and community that is based on surveillance and displacement.

Block Watch
VicPD and Victoria and Esquimalt councils both support VicPD’s local Block Watch program. You’ve probably seen the creepy signs, where the houses have faces. It’s a world where people are their homes, and they are watching you! The older signs use a shield to frame three smug houses patting each other on the head, talking about how “All suspicious activities [are] reported to police.” Look at these jerks:

Self-satisfied block watch houses enjoy calling the police.

In a world of surveillance, neighbourhoods become “Block Watch Areas,” designed to protect those who are already there from those who are not. If you’re passing by and you don’t have a house, you’re visibly poor, or you’re not white, the signs let you know that homeowners are ready to protect their property value by calling the police.

VicPD rebranded Block Watch in 2019, slapping their logo on the signs and replacing the old line about suspicious activities with: “Join Block Watch VicPD.ca.” Or, shorter: “Join … VicPD.” At the bottom of the sign is another new phrase, “Working Together.”

New Block Watch signs feature VicPD branding.

The cops would like home-owning busybodies to think of community as synonymous with surveillance and home ownership. With the new branding it’s clear VicPD think homeowners want to be cops, too. VicPD reports there were 158 Block Watch groups in 2019, and they said they’ve seen more applications during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Map showing Block Watch locations in Victoria and Esquimalt, 2019. Note that those circles change size as you zoom in and out, and don’t necessarily cover the actual “Block Watch” areas. Image source: VicPD.ca

The Block Watch Society of BC says the program “encourages [people] to get to know their neighbours.” That bit sounds okay, and a friend once pointed out to me that some folks may get involved because they want to do something to benefit their neighbourhood, and they glom on to the existing structures to help with organizing.

Unfortunately, the Block Watch Society says the program is designed to “increase [people’s] level of vigilance and willingness to cooperate as a crime prevention group” and “to prevent and report crime and suspicious behaviour to the police.” The purpose, the Society says, “is looking out for one another” and “working with the police to reduce crime.” Essentially, Block Watch envisions its participants as an unpaid arm of the police.

Screenshot of a Block Watch Society of BC promo video where a neighbourhood stares down someone wearing a hoodie. Image source: YouTube.

The Block Watch Society’s website also pitches Block Watch as a community resource during COVID-19, to check on neighbours and pick up groceries. Those sound like good things, but neighbourhoods can do all of that without involving the police. Who’s going to stop you? You can pick up groceries without calling in an armed response every time you see someone in a hoodie.

Welcoming VicPD into any neighbourhood ignores the harms they inflict every day. Indigenous, Black and Muslim people are profiled and surveilled by Greater Victoria police departments, and people who use drugs or live in homelessness or poverty report unfair and unequal by VicPD. In 2019, VicPD used weapons to threaten at least 248 people, including at least 37 people VicPD believed to be in mental health distress. VicPD used weapons on at least 48 people, at least 50% of whom they believed to be in mental health distress. That’s who responds when “suspicious activities [are] reported to police.”

The 158-and-rising “Block Watch Areas” in Victoria and Esquimalt are visible boundaries of neighbourhoods who have said they are willing to welcome police violence for the sake of protecting property and privilege. If any Block Watch member’s goal is community response and care, it’s worth remembering the core function of Block Watch is to work with and call the police.

I worked hard on this winking Block Watch GIF so it’s my conclusion now.

Neighbourhoods can reject city council and VicPD’s desire to bring surveillance, discrimination and displacement into every corner of the city. In my next post I’ll discuss VicPD’s “Crime Watch” program, which embodies the same principles as Block Watch.