17 Downtown Eastside residents, workers file complaint against alleged police harassment

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — It’s been two years since a group of 17 people living and working on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside filed a complaint against two Vancouver police officers alleging a history of harassment and abuse. A lawyer who represents those involved says mediations have concluded without success.

The 17 complainants allege harassment, threatening behaviour and abuse at the hands of two officers. Lawyer Anna Cooper says the complaint represents just a fraction of people’s experiences, noting barriers people in the neighbourhood face when making complaints about police wrongdoing.

“When you file a complaint, the officer gets your name. When you are someone living and surviving on the streets of the Downtown Eastside, you don’t have the luxury of getting away from the place where they are involved in daily beat policing. They make decisions of who they’re going to target, who they’re going to enforce petty bylaws against, who they’re going to search and detain,” she explains. “That’s frankly a terrifying situation for somebody. And it’s a big part of the reason we don’t see more complaints.”

It’s been two years since a group complaint was filed by 17 people living & working on #Vancouver‘s DTES against two VPD officers alleging harassment, threats & abuse.

Now they’re calling for accountability from the force after failed mediations and pandemic delays. @NEWS1130

— Bailey Nicholson (@bcjnicholson) May 28, 2021

Robert Taylor, a worker in the area, is one of the 17 who has stepped forward. He tells NEWS 1130 that he was treated poorly when he called the VPD to help with a potentially violent situation.

“A small group [of officers] came in, and I dealt with one officer who was kind of in charge of the group of folks that were addressing the issue. And I the situation … didn’t sit with me well,” he says.

Taylor says the officer questioned why he wasn’t able to address the incident himself. And while Taylor does not remember the exact word the officer used, he “basically told me that I was soft.”

“It was really degrading because being a worker in the Downtown Eastside, we work alongside the police, and a lot of them can be really wonderful, and when they’re good, they’re good. But when they’re not good, they’re extremely bad. And this was one of those situations,” he says.

“It did leave me with a feeling of feeling unsafe, my fellow workers didn’t feel safe, nor did the folks that lived in the building.”

Taylor says as a person who manages a program in the area, the issue he was asking for assistance with was of concern for workers’ safety and the safety people who lived in the building.

“I needed that additional support because it’s out of my scope of competency to address things that can [be] potentially … violent.”

Taylor felt it was important to participate in the group complaint, which he says has been a long two years, and been “very emotionally draining,” but worth it.

“It’s time for us to be more visible.”

“I don’t feel that accountability is there. I’ve been working in the Downtown Eastside for a very, very long time. And I think it’s as simple as acknowledging some time behaviours. I know it’s hard work for officers down here, just like the rest of us. But what I didn’t see in this situation with any acknowledgement of any [possible] wrongdoing. And when you have such a large number of folks, and you can’t acknowledge anything — it’s harmful.”

Cooper tells NEWS 1130 sometime after the file was processed, it was referred for mediation, which her clients decided to attend as a way to resolve the issue.

However, the process was delayed for a number of reasons, including COVID.

“We finally had the mediation back in October of 2020. What followed after that was a few months of back and forth negotiations, with the end result that there was no negotiated resolution,” she says.

Cooper’s clients agreed to “participate in good faith in the mediation process by not being in the media for that time.”

With no resolution,  the group is now turning to the press for visibility.

“To date, there hasn’t been any public admission of any wrongdoing. And beyond the two officers themselves … there was also a service and policy complaint concerning the conduct of the VPD more generally, and the VPD’s selection and training of officers in the Downtown Eastside,” Cooper says.

“Far from responding to that in a good way, the VPD actually applied to close it while we were still asking questions, and never committed to making any changes. Even when the Police Complaint Commissioner wrote to the police board asking that they reopen that service and policy complaint, they refused. I think that’s really indicative of how this isn’t just about the two specific officers, but is a broader culture within the VPD of rejecting accountability.”

Cooper says the best outcome of the case is if the officers involved are permanently removed from beat policing.

“Not just in the Downtown Eastside, but also within any community where you have more marginalized and vulnerable people.”

However, she admits it would be an unlikely outcome of the complaint process.

“But I think the hope here is that through the collective voices and pressure of a larger group, that perhaps it could be a response that goes beyond those disciplinary proceedings, and also that possibly, in making those final findings, the disciplinary authority here will be mindful of the pattern instead of looking at each individual finding, and actually respond in a way that meaningfully addresses the pattern that we are seeing regarding these two officers.”

An investigation by the Office of the Police Complaints Commissioner is currently underway.