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Hundreds of additional Vancouver Police Department officers were on the job across the city this past weekend to deal with nine war-related protests that occurred as police dealt with the usual incidents of violence.
According to VPD spokesperson Sgt. Steve Addison, thousands of people were drawn to the city to attend gatherings supporting both sides of the continuing Israeli-Hamas conflict in the Middle East.
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“Like many major cities across Canada, we’ve seen an increase in the number of people gathering to protest recent geopolitical events,” Addison said. “We continue to deploy extra officers so we can manage these protests while maintaining service to all neighbourhoods in the city.”
He said there were no arrests made at any of the protests, though photos suggest some people were briefly detained.
However, additional police were deployed to manage those protests as well as 1,600 other reported incidents.
Addison said there were five knife-related incidents over the weekend and two related to bear spray.
VPD Chief Adam Palmer said the extra officers assigned over the weekend was “going to be a budgetary issue because it’s significant call-outs.”
“But we’re not going to scrimp on public safety and we’re going to make sure we’ve got the right resources out there to keep the community safe.”
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