Quote:
Originally Posted by svlt
You're being a bit too quick to dismiss these issues. Twitter has been abuzz with photo and video evidence of repeat offenders coming back over and over again. The level of vitriol is way overboard of course and the discourse online has gotten past the point of civility, certainly you can't say the civic leadership here has done the best they can with the drug/homelessness problem - and subsequent criminal activity they've bred, and harsher punishments may be merited in several situations.
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I realize the police can have a "look the other way" policy when it comes to certain crimes (theft below a certain $ threshold, drug possession, sidewalk stores), but I have a hard time believing a criminal that slashed a stranger's throat won't be charged with assault. If that criminal is given a lenient sentence, that is a legal system issue and not something the city has jurisdiction over. If "harsher punishments may be merited in several situations", talk to the federal and provincial governments, not the city.
Vancouver has a huge homeless population and almost half is from other provinces. I don't think the homeless are coming here because Vancouver is nice to the homeless. The homeless move to Vancouver for the same reason other Canadians do: the weather sucks in most of Canada (it's nicer to sleep outside when it isn't minus 30).
The CoV does not have room in the budget to solve Canada's homeless problem on its own, but it has been stuck with a disproportional number of homeless.