‘Another Safety Net’: Safewalk Group Forms in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant

A wave of social media reports about men following women in Vancouver has left many residents concerned that the city’s police department isn’t treating the cases seriously.

And people in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood have taken action on their own, creating a “Safewalk” program that provides volunteers to accompany anyone who feels at risk or unsafe while walking.

One woman who encountered a man behaving suspiciously on Commercial Drive Saturday evening said that despite misgivings, she called police.

She said their response left her convinced officers aren’t taking the cases seriously. “I knew I was going to have a bad experience calling, and I did.”

The 32-year-old artist, who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons, was walking with a friend on Saturday evening when they noticed a man standing by a silver vehicle, watching them.

Heading inside her apartment, the woman’s friend insisted the car matched descriptions of a vehicle involved in suspicious incidents she had seen on Instagram. When the woman ran outside to take a photo of the man, he got into his vehicle, turned the car’s lights off and sped away, she said.

Initially she didn’t want to report the incident, worried it was unimportant.

“I didn’t want to be seen as hysterical or making things up for attention — because honestly, that’s why I called [the non-emergency line],” she said.

Two officers came to her house that evening to obtain her blurry photo of the man’s car, she said, and one of them offhandedly commented that the information spreading over social media had “pretty much been debunked.”

The woman posted her account of what happened on Instagram and it quickly spread on Facebook and Twitter as well, bolstered by media reports early last week that two similar incidents had been reported to the Vancouver Police Department.

Other people shared stories of similar encounters, many describing a man in a silver vehicle: slim, white, in his late 20s to mid-30s. Posts described incidents in the Mount Pleasant, Burnaby, Commercial Drive and UBC neighbourhoods.

No one has been apprehended in relation to these cases.

But on Friday, the night before the Commercial Drive encounter, the VPD released a statement on its official Twitter account. “Many of you have contacted us with concerns about recent social media posts about incidents alleged to have happened in Mount Pleasant. At this point, there doesn’t appear anything to indicate a threat to public safety.”

Many of you have contacted us with concerns about recent social media posts about incidents alleged to have happened in Mount Pleasant. At this point, there doesn’t appear anything to indicate a threat to public safety. If you see something suspicious, please report it to police. pic.twitter.com/V9iOMRIVPB

— Vancouver Police (@VancouverPD) September 25, 2020

Many people criticized this statement as insufficient. “Dozens of reports by women describing the exact same car, and they just brush it off,” one user noted.

According to Const. Tania Visintin of the VPD, police don’t currently have enough information to determine whether the reports are linked but are still taking the matter seriously.

She said frontline officers concentrated around the Mount Pleasant area are paying “special attention to this issue,” and that crime analysts and detectives from the Sex Crimes Unit are involved.

“What happened was, I think through social media, those incidences became misconstrued for abductions and attempted abductions, when in fact, they weren’t. An abduction never occurred, neither were they attempted either,” said Visintin. “That’s not to say we’re not taking them seriously.”

When pressed on Wednesday about the initial statement, Visintin said she stands by it. She noted that the Vancouver Police Department has received descriptions of men aged anywhere from 20 to 60 years old, making it hard to pin down a description. A photo of a licence plate would be helpful, she added.

“The wording is what has to be out there. We can’t put out a warning when we don’t know what to warn people about, specifically,” she said.

‘Our communities keep us safe’

As trust in law enforcement erodes and the Defund the Police movement gains momentum, some people are rethinking their notions of safety and choosing to prioritize community-centred approaches.

Last Thursday, a group of friends launched Mount Pleasant Safewalk on Instagram. The program, which sends a pair of volunteers to escort anyone who calls between 6 p.m. and 1 a.m. any day of the week, began Monday evening.

In recent years, safewalk programs have become a mainstay on post-secondary campuses across Canada, bolstered by a rising consciousness of the disturbing rates of campus sexual assault. UBC’s safewalk service, for instance, run by the school’s student union, conducted an average of 300 to 600 walks per month in 2018.

Sexual assault is the only violent crime still rising in Vancouver, according to statistics spanning 2011 to 2018.

Based on self-reported data from the 2014 General Social Survey, only five per cent of sexual assaults are reported to police nationally.

According to TJ McWilliam, who spoke to The Tyee on behalf of the group, the Mount Pleasant Safewalk team wanted to create “another safety net” in the community.

Many of their members are restaurant workers and the idea started to support workers making their way home at the end of a shift through streets made empty because of COVID-19. But it’s since ballooned into a community-wide endeavour.

“Obviously there’s a heightened sense of awareness right now... but when that passes, this program will still continue. It’s not out of a direct response to these [incidents].”

The community support is there — within 24 hours of the account’s creation last Thursday, Mount Pleasant Safewalk had 793 followers. By Wednesday, that number had jumped to 2,613.

“It’s amazing to see the community response and the support,” McWilliam said. “It shows a clear representation that there is a need for a program like this, or that people have been thinking about this.”

The safewalk team didn’t receive any calls its first night, he said. But he hopes people will feel comfortable using the call line if they need to.

Mount Pleasant Safewalk has announced it will vet applicants through a video interview and a reference check and group leaders will accompany new volunteers to make sure they’re doing things correctly and safely.

Since the two reports made to the police that received media attention early last week, a “handful” of calls providing a similar description have been made, according to Visintin. She couldn’t verify exactly how many.

Some of the reports, she said, described incidents that took place a month or more ago.

Visintin urged people to be careful about getting their information from unverified sources on social media.

“We don’t want people telling the barista or their server, and we don’t want people posting on Instagram for a friend. We need to speak to people firsthand, because that’s the only way this will be investigated properly,” she said.

Still, informal networks of communication are how many women and non-binary people work to keep themselves safe and aware of what’s happening in their community.

One 34-year-old artist and organizer who lives in the Mount Pleasant area said she was out for her regular evening walk on Sept. 21 just before 10 p.m. when a car pulled up beside her and rolled its window down.

The woman, who requested to remain anonymous for safety reasons, recalls the driver asking for a favour and requesting to use her phone. Rattled, she replied, “Sorry, I’ve gotta go home,” she said.

“I just immediately felt something instinctual telling me to get out of there,” she said. Earlier that day, she had been sent a post about a suspicious incident involving a man approaching women in her neighbourhood but had dismissed it — now the post was front-of-mind as she ran the rest of the way home.

The woman ultimately chose to report the incident to police because she wanted to provide credibility to other reports and add potentially helpful information. But she did so with trepidation.

“I don’t have faith in the police as an institution to protect us. I think our communities keep us safe, or have the potential to keep us safe,” she said, expressing support for models like the Mount Pleasant Safewalk program.

She said her location — a central, relatively affluent neighbourhood in the midst of rapid gentrification — may have factored into the VPD’s prompt response.

“[Calling the police] was something that I weighed in the moment and decided to do, but I don’t know that I would do it every single time. And I certainly don’t think that they’re the solution to stop the incredibly prevalent sexual violence that happens in our communities.”

One post that has circulated in recent days alleges a specific person is responsible for at least a few of the incidents. According to Visintin, as of Monday nobody had called the VPD to report anyone specifically, and while the police are looking into the issue, they cannot follow up on social media posts alone.

After The Tyee spoke to Visintin on Monday, the VPD posted another statement on Twitter, acknowledging that they have received more reports fitting a similar profile and asking the public to continue reporting to 911.

#VPDNews: the Vancouver Police Department is asking the public to continue reporting incidents to #9-1-1 if their safety (or someone they know) is at risk. Please see the attached update. pic.twitter.com/pfBMx9tCSc

— Vancouver Police (@VancouverPD) September 28, 2020

The police shouldn’t base their investigations on the belief that every person affected by a suspicious incident will call them, the artist and organizer said.

“The trepidation about calling the police would be even higher [in other parts of the city], because folks who are poor, or racialized, or who are drug users or sex workers, or from any other kind of vulnerable positionality, they have a lot to fear from the police,” said the Mount Pleasant resident.