VANCOUVER Police Chief begs judges to jail chronic offenders
Date: Sunday, June 22 @ 11:04:58 PDT
Topic: Enforcement


Vancouver's police chief appealed to the courts Wednesday to get tough with chronic offenders. "Any career criminal with more than 30 convictions should be locked up", said Chief Const. Jim Chu.

"We are asking our judges to protect the public by giving these criminals significant prison time," he said.

Chu said the police department is monitoring 379 chronic offenders, almost all of them addicted to cocaine or crystal meth or both, with 27 classified as "super chronic."

"There is an epidemic of career criminals who infect our city," Chu said.

"I'm talking about the plague of career criminals who infect our city, commit hundreds of crimes literally everyday, despite the fact that many have more than 100 criminal convictions.

"These criminals primarily commit property crimes to feed their drug addictions." One super-chronic offender has 80 convictions and a crack cocaine addiction.

He needs to steal daily, even hourly, to feed his habit, which gobbles up more than $1.2 million worth of property in a year.

"We say 30 strikes and give these criminals significant jail time," Chu said. "The average length of jail sentences is going down not up.

"In Vancouver the situation has reached ludicrous proportions . . . we have literally thousands of these criminals who in any other city would be classified as chronic offenders after they have had five criminal convictions."

Chu said one offender has a record of convictions so long "it will no longer fit on the national computer system."

Insp. Rob Rothwell said no other jurisdiction in Canada has a repeat-offender problem like Vancouver. "There is a property-crime problem here that is more than double that of Toronto and Delta," he said.

"Nowhere else has a city been experiencing to this extent the number of chronic offenders." The use of cocaine and crystal meth "puts them into a criminal spiral where they go 24/7 committing crimes and using the drugs."

"At some point there has to be some meaningful sentencing," he said. Albert Des Lauriers, who runs Save On Meats on East Hastings Street in the crime-ridden Downtown Eastside, said running a business in the area is very difficult.

"People don't care because there is no punishment," he said. "They are bragging about what they can get away with.

"If we don't correct this now, what will it be like in 20 years down there?"

Attorney-General Wally Oppal would not comment before seeing Chu's remarks.

Stan Lowe, spokesman for the criminal justice branch, said: "We know the root of many of these problems is drugs and we are hoping the community courts will help deal with prolific offenders."





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