Vancouver police budget increased by nearly half a million dollars for beach booze pilot
The Vancouver Police Department has added another $450,000 to its financials, growing the department’s budget for this year to over $415 million.
The additional funding was approved by Vancouver City Council Tuesday as part of a pilot project allowing alcohol on seven beaches in the city.
On Monday, the park board requested a total of $930,000 from the city to operate the pilot, with $450,000 allocated for policing.
Park board commissioner Tom Digby voted against Monday’s motion for the pilot, calling an increased police presence in parks and beaches alarming.
“To me, that was fairly disturbing because I don't think that’s consistent with what we think of in our parks,” he said.
According to data from the VPD, it’s seen an increase in violence at beaches since 2018. At Kitsilano Beach, reported violent incidents increased from four in 2018, to 12 in 2023.
At English Bay, violent calls increased from six in 2018 to 28 last year. The VPD adds that during that five year-period, overall calls for service slowly declined both city wide and at the two beaches.
VPD Inspector Marco Veronesi said last year, the department didn’t have enough time to properly plan for the pilot.
He said the city’s funding is overtime pay for twelve officers who will work mostly nights and weekends.
“We want to keep people safe, and unfortunately sometimes that takes dollars to do,” he said.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Coun. Pete Fry asked Veronesi if the VPD was sufficiently resourced to respond to incidents that happen on the beach on a Friday or Saturday night with regular shift deployments.
Veronesi replied yes, adding the VPD has a dedicated beach deployment in District One – which includes the neighbourhoods of the West End, Yaletown, Coal Harbour and the Central Business District of Vancouver.
“They [council] need to ask us and we need to be able to answer to why we’re asking for resources above what our normal budget is,” Veronesi said. “In this case here, this is a pilot that’s happening in the middle of the year that we weren’t able to adjust for during budgeting process last year.”
Green councillor Adriane Fry said she was reluctant to see the increased funding for police and questioned the report -- calling some of the stats about 311 calls in the report contradictory.
“At one point there’s a statement made that 311 calls in 2023 only resulted in 19 complaints. Later on it talks about how those numbers have increased,” she said.
Veronesi said four officers will be deployed at southern beaches and eight will be deployed at northern beaches such as English Bay, despite it not being part of the alcohol pilot project.
“The deployment of more officers at English Bay is an education piece,” he said. “It’s sort of getting the city socialized to what’s allowed and what’s not allowed.”
The pilot project will begin June 1 and run until the end of September.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
BREAKING BMO clients face outages in Canada, U.S. following data centre fire alarm
Bank of Montreal clients on both sides of the border Thursday morning have reported outages with banking services. BMO said its technical team is investigating.
Drive one of these vehicles? You may pay 37 per cent more than average insurance costs due to thefts
As the number of auto theft incidents rises in Canada, so have insurance premiums for drivers, even the ones whose vehicles aren't stolen.
B.C. mortgage broker ran $270-million Ponzi scheme, then fled Canada, bankruptcy trustee says
The trustee appointed to manage the bankruptcies of a Victoria mortgage company and its owner has concluded that they committed "numerous offences" and operated as a "massive Ponzi scheme."
'I'm not wealthy': Ontario senior shocked she owes $40,000 in capital gains after gifting land
An Ontario senior who wanted to help her daughter and grandson eventually own homes one day decided to give them two lots on her property as a gift—but she didn’t know it would eventually cost her tens of thousands of dollars.
Want to turn off Meta AI? You can't - but there are some workarounds
If you use Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram, you've probably noticed a new character pop up answering search queries or eagerly offering tidbits of information in your feeds, with varying degrees of accuracy.
opinion Trump's Republicans falling far behind in fundraising, infrastructure
In his latest column for CTVNews.ca, Washington political analyst Eric Ham explains how and why Republicans -- up and down the ballot -- are falling far behind Democrats in both fundraising and infrastructure.
Canadians are eyeing moves to these cities for more affordable housing
Faced with elevated housing prices, half of Canadians in the country's largest cities are considering moving to places with more affordable housing.
Canadians' interest in buying EVs fades as barriers, concerns remain: J.D. Power
A new study finds fewer Canadians say they're interested in buying an electric vehicle as concerns remain about limited driving ranges, high prices and a lack of charging stations.
McDonald's says US$18 Big Mac meal was an 'exception' and their prices haven't risen that much
McDonald’s is fighting back against viral tweets and media reports that it says have exaggerated its price increases.