VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Mild weather, mental illness, and drug addiction.
Those are among the reasons Vancouver police give for the high number of chronic offenders in the city.
Vancouver’s mayor is among the people wondering why the city has this many chronic offenders.
Officially, the Chronic Offender Unit is keeping track of 345 people, but police say it could be as high as 800 if they used the standard definition.
Sergeant Bill Pake says drugs and mental illness are among the reasons for the high number.
“I think we do have a huge number of mentally ill and addicted people within our city, and we have to deal with the fact they are here,” says Pake.
Police say close to 90 per cent of chronic offenders are male, and two thirds don’t have a regular home.
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Mentally ill Canadian citizens should be able to live where ever in Canada they want to, just like everyone else. So what if they move to BC because the weather is better than in the rest of Canada? I know very few people who were born in BC, most opted to move here because of the milder climate. ‘ Vancouver’s mayor is among the people wondering why the city has this many offenders’ – how many are we talking about and compared with where else? Sure, mentally ill individuals can contribute to social ills in a city, but from my perspective (being relatively new to Vancouver), the majority of serious crime here that i have witnessed or been privy to via media, is mainly to do with gang drug culture. There are so many homeless people wandering around Vancouver, surely a solution that would go a long way to helping fix ‘petty’ crime in this city would be to provide more shelters and independent living for these people, rather than spending money creating bike lanes that seem empty most of the time. Maybe then, they could stop breaking into cars to knick a pair of sunglasses they can sell on the streets for a couple of bucks.
Send them back to Ontario!
Rain, rain, rain!
Time To Get These Offenders Off Our Streets NOW
It has a lot to do with the weather! I have known many “back east” people who head this way when they are either young and experimenting with life or past the point of likely ever achieving their hopes and dreams. This migration of young or down and outs from all of our colder provinces is directly because of the milder weather here. It is clearly more comfortable to live outdoors here year round than it is in Ontario, for example. If you were facing living on the street, why would you stay there when you could hitch a ride to the “promised land” (as I have heard a fair number of Ontarian’s refer to Vancouver)?
This is why we’re an unfriendly city. Vancouver is the end of line where the misfits go. You never know who you’re going to run across in this city, and what kinds of freaks could move in next to you.
No, not even close. Vancouver’s criminality is a function of Balkanized regional policing, incompetent crown attorneys and a society overwhelmingly against following models that work, simply because it is usually from “back east.” Wallow in it if you like, but please, don’t blame the weather.
Until the Federal Government provides transfer payments to cover the cost of providing services to those poor addicted souls who have migrated from out of province to the warmer climes of the Lower Mainland…..they should be sent back to their home province.
It’s amazing that Mr. Robertson cannot connect the dots -it’s not a stretch to figure out the attraction to Vancouver. Camp fires in the local parks should be cause for concern.
Which just proves that if you provide the facilities, food banks and places like Insite; the will come in droves.
The dumb NDP and socialists just do not get it!