Vancouver Police Chief Adam Palmer, left, and Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart listen during the Vancouver Police Board monthly meeting that was held at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, in Vancouver, on June 13, 2019.DARRYL DYCK/The Globe and Mail
Vancouver police have been conducting active shooter and evacuation drills at the city’s Jewish Community Centre amid concerns about rising anti-Semitism, the city’s police chief says.
Chief Adam Palmer said Thursday that although there is no concerted threat against the facility at this time, police “do all sorts of training, right here in this facility.”
His comments came as the Vancouver police board held one of their monthly meetings at the centre, a rare visit by the body that includes civilians and Mayor Kennedy Stewart.
Mr. Palmer acknowledged the city’s Jewish community has been subject to hate crimes, as well as attacks on Jewish people elsewhere in the world.
“We have done extra training with the Jewish community at their request,” Mr. Palmer said. “We take that very seriously.”
In a presentation to the board, hate crimes investigator Jacquie Abbot said the most targeted parties of hate crimes in Vancouver are members of the Jewish and Muslim communities, followed by members of the LGBTQ, Asian and black communities.
Although the board usually meets at police headquarters, they occasionally go out into various community venues.
Remarks to the board included a presentation on anti-Semitism and safety concerns for the community.
Daniel Heydenrych, the security director for the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, spoke to the board about lockdown drills and threat drills that have been under way at the centre. He said the centre has also secured panic buttons and blast film on windows via a federal security infrastructure funding program.
Nico Slobinsky, Pacific region director of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, spoke of his memories of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community centre in his hometown of Buenos Aires that killed 85 and injured more than 300.
“My own father spent hours at the scene, along with countless others, searching through the rubble for survivors,” he told the board.
He said the Vancouver police department has been vigilant, but that he remained concerned about security at synagogues and other facilities, citing mass shootings at synagogues in Pittsburgh and San Diego County.
“On the global stage, Canada is comparatively safe. But we are not immune to these nasty global trends,” he said.
Mr. Slobinsky called for measures to counter anti-Semitism, continued co-operation between the VPD and the Jewish community, and efforts to curb hate propaganda and incitement.
In a scrum after his speech, he acknowledged the “unfortunate reality" that the community centre has more security than other similar centres in Vancouver.
“The Jewish community knows full well they need to provide safety and security and extra layers of protection to Jewish schools, the community centres and synagogues. It’s an unfortunate reality of 2019.”
A B’nai Brith Canada audit of anti-Semitic incidents, released in May, reported a 126-per-cent increase in such incidents in B.C. in 2018, compared with 2017.
And according to a recently released Statistics Canada analysis, hate crimes rose for the fourth straight year in Canada in 2017 – the last year for which data is available – fuelled by increases in crimes against the Muslim and Jewish community, as well as crimes targeting the black community.
However, police solved just 28 per cent of hate-crime incidents in 2017. By comparison, among all Criminal Code violations (excluding traffic violations), 40 per cent of crimes were solved that year.
In 2017, police reported 2,073 criminal incidents motivated by hate, 47 per cent more than were reported the previous year, according to a Statistics Canada report.
That same report said Canada’s three largest census metropolitan areas – Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal – are home to most of the Canadians who are members of religious groups targeted by religiously motivated hate crimes.
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Ian Bailey