A new VPD training academy opens downtown

0:00America leads the world in medicine development. It matters. We get new medicines first nearly three years faster. Five million Americans go to work because we make medicines here at home and not relying on other countries keeps us safe. But China is racing to overtake us. Will we let them or will we choose to stay ahead? When America leads, America cures. Let's tell Washington to keep us in the lead. Learn how at americancures.com. Pay for by farma. Vancouver police are launching a new training academy in the heart of the city. Part of a push to deal with officer shortages and growing pressures on frontline policing. Now the Vancouver police training academy center of excellence will be located in the Woodward's building on Abbott Street near the downtown east side. Police say the goal is to train more officers faster and address what city officials describe as a structural bottleneck in recruitment. Now the province has approved the academy as part of a two-year pilot program under the oversight of the Justice Institute of BC. What joining me now to talk about the academy is Steve Ryan, Chief Constable

1:03of the Vancouver police department. Chief Constable Ryan, thank you for joining us today. Good to see you, Jas. Thank you. Well let's start with the big picture here and regards the new police training academy. Why does Vancouver need its own academy? You know Vancouver is a growing and continues to grow. It's the largest municipal police department in the province. The city is growing. The dynamics of what an officer should know be trained in, a specific to Vancouver is important that you know that we be able to do it and add that extra layer of training and outside of the basic undergrad police training if I can say it that way. So why can't the Justice Institute do that? Capacity is one. They're a standardized model. So Delta, Abbots for different communities, Surrey, Nelson, Victoria, you know nowhere else in North America and probably the world is there a downtown east side and you know on and on it goes

2:03and hyper you know Vancouver is the center of social issue policing. We can do it more efficiently, more effectively. We can we do already eight weeks roughly outside of the Justice Institute. We do like let's call it academic language. We do postgraduate training. We do you know pre four weeks, post four weeks, eight weeks, just to supplement the police academy. The model was outdated in the 70s and 80s when it was at the old West Point Gray campus, right? That's where all of us went. Yeah. And it was a great standalone police academy. It outgrew that model and they went to the new Westminster, you know, all in campus model, which is, you know, everybody training together, sheriffs, corrections, fire, that academic institution is outgrown that that model is outgrown. And now, you know, I think it's important that we pull out, open up seats for other departments like Surrey and they can have that standardized model and that's why it's important. So and that I understand, but does that not also say that the Justice Institute needs to modernize

3:06or update their training so that you as a municipal police force do not have to eat the costs and having to do that. I mean, there's always going to be whether it's policing or any other job on the on the on the ground training of any particular sector, but the bulk of the training should be done by the Justice Institute, whether instead of the Vancouver Police Department and ultimately Vancouver taxpayer eating that cost. Yeah. So what you saw on play out was a debate on that. And, you know, so, you know, we reached an agreement. I mean, Vancouver received the authority to train for two years as a model and that'll go well. I'm confident. But the debate that you heard was around what you said, we should be able to do it. We can do it. Okay, but increasing capacity doesn't mean you've increased quality. Putting up cubicles or, you know, the portables outside in the parking lot for professional police officers to be trained in, I don't think is a good model. And yes, they should be able to do it. And I advocated and I met with the premier and I said,

4:07hey, you need to go back to a standalone emergency services academy where fire and police can train together in one standalone. That the Justice Institute, in my opinion, my view, and I know it's going to make some people angry, but it has become more of a post-secondary institution. And you're charging young people, you know, huge amount of money to get undergraduate degrees and public safety and so forth. And, you know, it's just, it doesn't work there. What you're seeing is not practical in regards to what a Vancouver police officer needs on the ground. That's right. Or any, you know, the best model would be a standalone police academy for all provincial officers in one location and almost going back to the future, you know, and that's what you need. Now, if we can't get that, then Vancouver can, on its own, train specifically, police officers, it'll in a very high tech format. There's also debate around the format of training.

5:08And so we believe in more hands-on training, technology use, and less on self-study and self-directed type training. If you do this well, is this going to be the model in your mind for this province, potentially? I mean, the province is watching, I'm sure the J.I. is watching, certainly the experts here are watching. Is this going to be the model, you think? I'm confident it will be, and I hope so, but I don't know if every department has the capacity or the ability or the facilities or the expertise to be able to run at that level. So, you know, we, you know, just we stand up the Academy at the Justice Institute quite a bit. I mean, eight of our, we have eight officers, it's a condo there as instructors. A lot of the contract instructors that are there are retired Vancouver police officers. We send out a lot of expertise to do advanced training, like accident reconstruction, you know, critical incident training. So it's Vancouver that sells our officers to teach in an area there under their license. So we can do that. I just not sure every department will be able to do that. All right. Well, let's look at your hard

6:10numbers here. The department to my understanding currently is what about 165 hard vacancies and another 150 officers off-temperor early. Is that about right? That's about right. It goes up and down. So two weeks ago, it was around 162, went up to 167. Now it's about in the mid 150s this week, you know, just depends on the hiring and exit of officers retirement. And we have about 150, these is 150 soft vacancies, injuries, matley, patley, and 150 hard vacancies. That's 300 vacancies. How much pressure is that putting on the front line when it comes to policing? We're managing, we're managing. We got a backend, really robust. We monitor, we have rules, we have software, that makes sure officers aren't working seven days a week, you know, and some of them are, and you know, we catch it to make sure mentally they're, they're good. But it is, you see the city, 4,000 protests slash events a year. That's what we're going to this year. 4,000. Yeah, it was 3,000 last year, 3,200, where it's protests and events. It'll be close to 4,000 FIFA coming. And maybe

7:11over that, that's a big drain. And on top of that, we're fighting crime. On top of that, we're doing community policing. On top of that, we're doing social issue policing. And so it's, it's imperative. The training's good. The support networks are good. The political sports important. And of course, you know, the ability to fill those vacancies quicker is important. And how fast, how much of an impact do you think this training facility will have in regards to filling those spots? Well, we don't start training there until September. May, we're still going to be at the academy with the next class. And then so I can see a pretty good change here because we're also hiring a retired officer program we have going and we're still getting really good numbers walking in the door. And along with us being able to slide up and down within 12 months, so I should see some relief. Where are we in regards to the policing situation? We've talked a lot about task force barrage. There's issues around, of course, the the departure of London drugs at the Woodward's building. Give me a sense of how you're viewing the downtown east side as a police chief. What do you see? I'll give you my, so I grew up here. I used to ride my

8:15bike around like a lot of people that, you know, yourself and all, you know, Vancouver, you could go anywhere. And so we know all the corners, nukes and crannies have been a cough for 35 years, worked on the street. So one place that hasn't changed and, you know, maybe some would argue gotten worse is the downtown east side. No where else in North America, as I mentioned. Nothing's worked, right? Decrim, insight. I mean, those are all helpful pillars approach. They're all good intention, well intentioned. They've made differences in pockets, but, you know, it hasn't worked. And, you know, it's grown and mental health and addiction and poverty. Those aren't policing issues. And we, you know, we've been down there, you know, walking and talking the beat to help people, but it just isn't making a difference. I mean, lots of people have talking about back end care. I agree with that compassionate care. But the downtown east side, and I've advocated for we're going to go down there. We're going to plant a flag. We're going to

9:18put our training facility in there with the young new bright recruits happy. They're going to be walking and talking in the neighborhood training in the neighborhood. Barrage was a success. It chased away the criminal element. It's a bit of a cycle down there. The criminal element prey on these poor people who, you know, suffer, they're addicted. They go out and do crime and then they sell buy drugs from these criminals. So we're going to break that cycle and we're going to chase those criminals out. And we're going to be present there 24-7 with the new district. We're going to make sure officers are walking and talking, foot patrols. The businesses are, you know, the ones that are struggling. We're going to try to help them by being present. These restaurants and nothing else has worked. So if you look back on any videos, anything back from how the downtown east side started, you know, from the 40s and minors and fishermen and loggers. And, you know, it's not going to reverse itself like, you know, magic. And I'm expect the police department to do that. No, but we're going to help and we're going to help by being present because the, you know,

10:18the cheapest crime fighting tool is presence. So any police officer will tell you that has any training. So presence is the is the lowest, most least invasive, cheapest form of crime fighting, just being there and walking and talking to people because the criminal element is like any other prey animal where there's a threat. In this case, the police, they don't go there. It's part of the problem like I mean, I used to be a crime reporter many years ago now, but we're a port city. So we're always going to have drugs coming to this city. Always going to attract organized crime and different types of organized crime come and go. But when you look at, when you look at the Sinaloa cartel specifically, huge amounts of dollars tentacles around the world. I know whether it's a collective society or or or just a municipality, I just think we're kind of outguns sometimes at that with the resources that these folks have. Yeah. And we don't have

11:18that singular focus and wanting to get rid of them because it's one municipality and another guard level of garbage not paying attention or another city's not paying attention. It takes a singular focus to say we want to rid these cartels or these individuals out of here. And I don't think we've had the attention span as a society to do that. Yeah, I hear what you're touching on. So here's the thing is I don't disagree with anything you said. You know, it's a bigger issue for this particular neighborhood. We're going to do our part. I not I haven't seen the evidence robustly that the cartels are running street level drug dealers and praying on addicts in in the downtown east side. I'm sure somewhere in the back end if you go back 10 rungs, the drugs are coming from cartels. I'm just not sure they're running them on the street here in the downtown east side and having them do thefts and shop lifters. I know that's a public debate. I've heard those comments from different corners. And yes, we got to get our act together in Canada. 100% like I mean, we're chasing our tail, right? And whether we like it or not,

12:22and we got a probably to be more compassionate to have more compassionate outcomes, we probably got to be a little bit less compassionate on the front end, which is crime fighting and supporting the police public safety works when it's funded properly. Do you feel your funded properly? Because there's going to be the debate out there has been we're spending too much on policing. This administration at City Hall has been too generous. Others will say, wait a minute, here downtown gets an exponential number of protests and events as you say. You've got something unique called the downtown east side. Some say you're an overpriced police department. What do you say to those calls? Yeah, I totally disagree. Here's here's what's at any city thrives when people can leave their front doors and go to a movie, go to restaurants. They're not watching their back. Their mums can stand at a bus stop and wait for the bus to get home after shopping. That creates a vibrancy. Public safety is that, you know, unappreciate.

13:23When everything's going well and crimes low and people are feeling good and they're spending money and they're walking and talking and going to the pubs, nobody thinks about public safety because it's there and it's it's it's it's a you know, symbiotic with our society. When it goes bad, that's it's too late then. And because it takes years for the police to catch up to fight the criminal elements. So well funded means a well vibrant economically prosperous city. You look at the models across the world. I mean, you can look at Detroit, you can look at Portland, you can look at Seattle when they lost when they laid off all their cops and now they're hiring like crazy to get them back. What can do to a city? You can look in Europe, the cities that are suffering. We're a crime and disorder and and you know, pit pockets on and on to go. So I may be biased because I'm a police officer, but I'm telling you if you're not if you're if you're son, you get a teenage son, if you're son, you know, he's once come downtown to watch a movie and it's not a safe city. He's not spending money. You're not going to let him go. Like it just times it by three million people in the region. I'll tell you another thing. Some of that narrative

14:26that's coming there about the police and being overfunded or is American language. Okay, so certain elements in our society have to stop bringing this stuff up here. George Floyd was an American racial issue and some people hijacked it to bring it across the line here. We have our issues here, but DeFund came from that. DeFund is an American word. DeFund the police down there. We brought now ice. Don't bring us. Well, why would ice be here? Stop bringing American stuff up here and mudding our own culture, our own history, our own social issues. Find find your own issue, Canadian issue. So when you say police are overfunded, I really do think it's that the roots of that started with Floyd and DeFund and all that language. I think it's been a challenge for policing since Rodney King. I'd go that far back. Yeah, yeah, 100% and it's been issue after issue after that. Final question to FIFA World Cup. Huge challenge before the police and it grows to keeping everybody safe and everybody happy and having fun. How do you feel moving

15:27forward? Are you prepared? Let's explain the preparation for me. So, so we the VPD policing only have the public safety envelope and we have had a team working on it now for almost two years. So we've got it. It will be a whole of department response. All leaves been cancelled. All you know, any all trainings been cancelled. Every officer will be on a corner along with officers from Calgary, Edmonton and the RCMP will be in our city. You'll see lots of different uniforms. The planning has been robust. It's been like the Olympic planning, you know, everything from command centers, drones, wherever the officer is going to be, technology use on, you know, policing certain fans zones. So we're doing our part and, you know, we're ready 100%. We're probably we need the federal government and other levels of government just to be ready for the fun part of, you know, FIFA. We'll be in the background. It'll be safe. It'll be fun.

16:30I think it's going to get more exciting as we get a little bit closer and the flags and the flowers go up in the neighborhoods and all that. But we're ready, just like we did for the Olympics. Final question to you. How long have you been pleased? It's almost one year. Almost one year having fun. Oh, yeah. Well, listen, I grew up here. I love the city and it would be, it's fun because it would be less fun to be sitting in a launcher watching things happen on issues I care about and they're not, you know, me making the difference. So you know what that's about. So you know that. And, uh, so yeah, it's fun. Oh, good. Yeah. You have a smile on your face. That's good to see you through a few cheap consequences. Yeah. I know. I know. Yeah. Steve Rhett, always good to see you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Rinse knows that greatness takes time, but soda's laundry. So Rinse will take your laundry and hand-deliver it to your door, expertly cleaned. And you can take the time pursuing your passions. Time one spent sorting and waiting, folding and queuing,

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