page_title: Vancouver
section_title: Policing and crime
hierarchical_section_title: Vancouver / Government / Policing and crime
caption_attribution_description: English: Hypodermic needles discarded on Station Street in Vancouver, BC
context_page_description: Vancouver is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the most populous city in the province, the 2016 census recorded 631,486 people in the city, up from 603,502 in 2011. The Greater Vancouver area had a population of 2,463,431 in 2016, making it the third-largest metropolitan area in Canada. Vancouver has the highest population density in Canada, with over 5,400 people per square kilometre, which makes it the fifth-most densely populated city with over 250,000 residents in North America, behind New York City, Guadalajara, San Francisco, and Mexico City. Vancouver is one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities in Canada: 52% of its residents are not native English speakers, 48.9% are native speakers of neither English nor French, and 50.6% of residents belong to visible minority groups.
  Vancouver is consistently named as one of the top five worldwide cities for livability and quality of life, and the Economist Intelligence Unit acknowledged it as the first city ranked among the top ten of the world's most well-living cities for ten consecutive years.
context_section_description: Vancouver operates the Vancouver Police Department, with 1,327 sworn members and an operating budget of $316.5 million in 2018. Over 19% of the city's budget was spent on police protection in 2018.
  The Vancouver Police Department's operational divisions include a bicycle squad, a marine squad, and a dog squad. It also has a mounted squad, used primarily to patrol Stanley Park and occasionally the Downtown Eastside and West End, as well as for crowd control. The police work in conjunction with civilian and volunteer run Community Police Centres. In 2006, the police department established its own Counter Terrorism Unit. In 2005, a new transit police force, the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority Police Service (now South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority Police Service), was established with full police powers.
  Before the legalization of marijuana, Vancouver police generally did not arrest people for possessing small amounts of marijuana. In 2000 the Vancouver Police Department established a specialized drug squad, "Growbusters", to carry out an aggressive campaign against the city's estimated 4,000 hydroponic marijuana growing operations (or grow-ops) in residential areas. As with other law enforcement campaigns targeting marijuana this initiative has been sharply criticized.
  As of 2018, Vancouver had the ninth-highest crime rate, dropping 5 spots since 2005, among Canada's 35 census metropolitan areas. However, as with other Canadian cities, the overall crime rate has been falling "dramatically". The rate of firearm related violence dropped from 45.3 per 100,000 in 2006, the highest of any major metropolitan region in Canada at that time, to 16.2 in 2017. A series of gang-related incidents in early 2009 escalated into what police have dubbed a gang war. Vancouver plays host to special events such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference, the Clinton-Yeltsin Summit, or the Symphony of Fire fireworks show that require significant policing. The 1994 Stanley Cup riot overwhelmed police and injured as many as 200 people. A second riot took place following the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals.
  Many streets in Downtown Vancouver are plagued with litter and discarded hypodermic needles from the city's homeless population, which in 2019 was estimated at 2,223. To reduce the public health risk from discarded hypodermic needles, the city runs a continuous collection effort, recovering approximately 1000 needles per day from public spaces. According to Vancouver Coastal Health, the regional health authority and a distributor of clean needles to intravenous drug users, there has never been a documented case of disease transmission from an accidental needlestick.
caption: Hypodermic needles scattered amidst trash on Station Street near Pacific Central Station
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