A man was stabbed repeatedly while waiting in line at Tim Hortons. A woman was attacked violently while walking on a downtown street outside a posh hotel.
These kinds of random attacks appear to be more common in these angry pandemic times – or, at least, they’re becoming more visible and getting more media coverage, thanks to the ubiquitous surveillance of phone cameras and broadcasting on social media.
Even police forces are sharing such footage. According to the Vancouver Police Department, which has released salacious videos of such assaults, there are an average of four “stranger assaults” daily in the city (there were a total of 1,555 in 2020-21), and half of them involve a weapon such as a knife or pepper spray. About one in three assaults are completely random and unprovoked, according to an analysis by the VPD. Yet the department hasn’t said much about the other two-thirds. Are they domestic violence incidents? Punch-ups between neighbours? Drunken altercations outside bars? Road rage?
The release of such videos seems to be a not-too-subtle campaign to foment fear and promote a law-and-order response (read: more spending on policing). The city’s deputy police chief, Howard Chow, even participated in a town hall hosted by three city councillors last month, which largely consisted of residents and business owners sharing horror-story anecdotes, with few solutions proposed.
But what is the solution? Or, more realistically, the solutions, plural, because the problem requires a multipronged approach.
Violence, from intimate partner violence through to gun violence and war, is a major public health challenge of which stranger attacks are a tiny part. Conventionally, violence is understood to be driven largely by negative emotions, such as anger and fear. But it also has roots in trauma, mental illness, powerlessness and stress, often with a dash of racism and misogyny thrown in for good measure.
There is no question that anti-social behaviour, including violent attacks on strangers, has surged during the pandemic. This is a worldwide phenomenon. But it is also likely not a coincidence that the highly publicized incidents of “stranger assaults” in Vancouver are occurring largely in the downtown core, which has a concentration of people who have long lived with homelessness, addiction, mental illness and poverty. There are more people than ever in the streets, and they are sicker and more desperate, and help is in some ways becoming harder to obtain.
Still, most people living with mental illness are not inherently violent. Research shows consistently that people with severe mental illness are about 10 times more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators.
A small percentage of those who are ill can indeed suffer from psychosis or violent outbursts. The police’s own data show that one in four people arrested for random attacks suffer from mental illness. Some are angry and violent.
At the public forum, Mr. Chow conceded as much, saying a small number of “incorrigibles” were responsible for most of the random violence. Some of these “well-known to police” types have as many as 400 interactions a year with law enforcement.
It should be said that Vancouver already has more than 1,300 uniformed officers and a $340-million budget. Putting more police on the streets is unlikely to reduce “stranger assaults” in a sustained way. Circulating viral videos isn’t going to make the public feel any safer, either.
However rare these attacks are – and to be clear, they remain rare, despite their higher profile – people’s fears are legitimate and shouldn’t be dismissed. But this is, unfortunately, one of those wicked problems that requires a sophisticated response. No one has a magic pill for making men less angry and violent – violence is largely a male problem – but we can address some underlying issues.
Vancouver recently announced plans to spend almost half a million dollars on initiatives that tackle homelessness, poverty and mental health in three downtown neighbourhoods. This is a drop in the bucket, however, for what’s really needed to address major challenges such as the toxic drug supply, a lack of supportive housing and better mental-health care. For instance, people arrested for “stranger assaults” are often apprehended under the Mental Health Act. They don’t go to jail, but they don’t get care either, at least not for long. They tend to go through a revolving door as a result.
We do people no favours by allowing them to live in squalor on the streets, as they do on a shockingly large scale in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. All sorts of social problems flow from that, including random violence.
But we shouldn’t forget that most of the harm people do is to themselves, not to strangers.
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André Picard