If you don’t feel safe in downtown Victoria, Matt Waterman wants you to speak up.
The Victoria police staff sergeant has been patrolling the streets for 30 years and has never been more concerned over the violence downtown.
Waterman, executive director of the Victoria City Police Union, sent out a media release describing how an officer was threatened by a man brandishing a metal pipe as he walked to his car outside the police station.
And this was not the first time an officer has been threatened on the way to their car, said Waterman.
“It’s part of our role to speak on behalf of the community. If we don’t feel safe, how does the community feel,” said Waterman. “We work in the environment and we see how people are randomly assaulted — innocent shop owners or citizens downtown. We feel like we are an extended arm of the public and we feel we need to speak up and say: ‘This isn’t good enough.’ ”
Waterman’s very aware of the anti-police element of society, but said he’s speaking out because he wants members of the public who support police to hear him.
“If I had a wish, it would be that anyone who lives, works or even visits downtown Victoria and doesn’t feel safe talks to the politicians — and not just Victoria council. If you don’t feel safe, you should say something.”
In recent weeks, police have responded to a murder, a fatal van fire and an assault of a female Pizza Hut employee, who was punched repeatedly by two men.
They arrested a man who poured gasoline on an occupied tent in Cecelia Ravine Park and threatened to set it on fire with a blow torch.
They disarmed a man at gunpoint who had assaulted bylaw officers with a shovel. A bylaw officer’s vehicle was smashed with a sledgehammer. Police also seized a baseball bat with nails embedded in it at an encampment.
The police union is committed to working with community partners on the growing and evolving situation with homelessness, said Waterman.
It’s calling for more support from the city and the province to address the challenges of housing, mental health, addiction and police resources.
“Shouldn’t we be demanding that there be more services for these people and shouldn’t we be demanding that the police have more resources?” asked Waterman.
It’s frustrating that Victoria council turned down Chief Del Manak’s 2019 appeal for more officers assigned to the integrated Assertive Community Treatment or ACT teams that help people with mental-health problems, said Waterman, who worked on the first integrated mental health team.
“To me that’s clear evidence that you’re not supporting the police, yet you aren’t even considering another solution,” he said.
It’s easy for officers to get discouraged with the defund-the-police and “All Cops Are Bastards” narrative, said Waterman.
On Thursday, a motion put forward by Coun. Stephen Andrew and approved by council recommended the mayor write to the provincial government and Island Health requesting special constable status for hospital security staff, provided they are given sufficient training. This would allow officers to get back to their regular duties after arresting someone under the Mental Health Act and bringing them to Royal Jubilee Hospital.
“That’s an encouraging motion,” said Waterman. “That’s one of the first good news stories that has come from one of our politicians.”
The staff sergeant thinks one solution would be to make criminal justice system hold offenders more accountable for their crimes.
“Someone smashes out windows downtown but then they’re out on the street the next day. One man does a string of robberies in Victoria and Saanich and is out the next day. The question is what if he actually causes injury to some poor innocent kid behind a store counter. COVID is not an excuse to release someone whose likelihood of offending is high,” said Waterman.
“If I had a complaint about provincial government policy, I would say the first consideration is being released. There’s no consideration for the public or the victim. It’s more about the offender.”
The union has created a True Blue podcast to humanize who’s actually behind the badge.
“If you think every cop is corrupt, you’re wrong,” Waterman said.
One of the podcasts is about Patrol Sgt. Darrell Fairburn, the first Victoria officer to use naloxone, the opioid overdose treatment. On his own, he went to the needle exchange and took the training to inject naloxone at the very start of the opioid crisis.
“He just did it because people were dying. … He’s probably saved 40 or 50 lives.”
