Victoria officials say parks unsafe as bylaw staff threatened

Photo: Glacier Media

Victoria’s bylaw officers ­continue to be threatened, chased and intimidated while monitoring homeless ­encampments, and the city no longer allows officers to visit certain parks unless ­accompanied by police, city council was told Thursday.

Victoria Police Chief Del Manak, who was seeking about $76,000 to extend a regular camp patrol to the end of March, made clear that he still considers the parks unsafe.

“There continue to be weapons,” he said. “There continue to be people that are living in fear. There’s a level of violence and safety is compromised.

“This requires a regular review — something that has to be done every single day. And I can tell you that we’ve had our bylaw officers who have been verbally assaulted, threatened, chased.”

He cited an incident Thursday morning at Cecelia Ravine Park in the Burnside Gorge neighbourhood where two bylaw officers were threatened with a shovel and “had to take refuge in their vehicle while the Victoria Police Department responded.” Once police arrived, officers disarmed the man at gunpoint, the department said.

On Wednesday, officers seized a baseball bat with nails and razor blades attached from an abandoned tent in a parking lot encampment next to Royal Athletic Park. “These are the types of weapons that we are seeing where people are feeling they need to protect themselves from other individuals,” he said.

Manak, who was requesting money to deploy two officers for four hours every day to assist bylaw staff, at one point asked council: “What’s a life worth to you? Or a city worker getting injured and seriously assaulted?”

Shannon Perkins, manager of bylaw services, confirmed there are a number of parks and public spaces that bylaw officers no longer visit without police.

City manager Jocelyn Jenkyns said the city views the situation as a health-and-safety issue. “We are not going to put our employees at risk or in potentially very dangerous situations,” she said. “We believe that police support is vital for bylaw to be able to do their job.”

Jenkyns said that if council declined to approve the money, the city would have to look at other ways for bylaw officers to do their jobs. “But they would not be attending in these potentially dangerous situations.”

Council eventually approved the spending in an 8-1 vote.