Daphne Bramham: Knife violence is increasing in B.C. It's time to do something about it
Opinion: Two homicides in two weeks as random stabbing attacks rise across Canada. It's knives that may be the greater risk in Canada than guns
Author of the article: Daphne Bramham
Publishing date: Apr 08, 2021 • 1 day ago • 4 minute read •
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Some of the weapons including knives found in a tent by Vancouver Police at the Oppenheimer Park homeless camp before it was dismantled. Photo by VPD
On Wednesday, a man walked into a dollar-store on Seymour Street without a mask on. When a security guard asked him to mask up, the man pulled out a knife.
He fled and has yet to be arrested.
Last weekend, three people were stabbed within hours of each other on the same block of East Hastings Street between Carrall and Columbia. A fourth was stabbed nearby at the Strathcona Park homeless camp.
The first victim arrived by taxi at the St. Paul’s Hospital emergency room around 4 p.m.
Close to 10 p.m., a 37-year-old man staggered and collapsed on the sidewalk. He died later in hospital of stab wounds — Vancouver’s fourth homicide this year.
Early Sunday morning on that same East Hastings block, four men attacked and stabbed a man.
Only a week earlier, a woman in her 20s died of stab wounds at North Vancouver’s Lynn Valley public library. Another 22-year-old woman suffered life-altering wounds in the random attack. A third was hospitalized, and three others had injuries that required medical attention.
Had the assailant had a gun instead of a knife, the Lynn Valley attack might have been a mass murder.
But there is no comfort in that for the families and friends, nor should there be for anyone. Knife violence is rising, across British Columbia and the rest of Canada.
In Victoria last week, police arrested a man with a knife who had “aggressively” been following a woman. He was taken to hospital and was held under the Mental Health Act. In 2020, he had assaulted a man with a wooden stick.
Five people went to Kelowna hospital in late March suffering from knife wounds. They had been stabbed at an outdoor “bush” party.
On March 28, a homeless man sitting outside the Main Street SkyTrain station was being harassed by four teens and an adult. A passerby intervened, was stabbed in the shoulder and had his hand slashed. The attacker was later arrested.
Another Good Samaritan was stabbed in the leg on March 26 when he tried to help a woman being harassed on East Hastings.
While police were arresting a woman at Dunlevy and East Hastings on March 6 for slashing tires on a parked vehicle, a 37-year-old man approached them and told them that the woman had stabbed him as well.
“Anecdotally, our officers are seeing an alarming number of unprovoked assaults,” Vancouver police Sgt. Steve Addison told me. “There are a likely a number of factors at play, including drug use and addiction, mental health, and anti-social behaviour.”
Vancouver police
crime statistics don’t specifically record knife violence. But between 2015 and 2020, weapons offences nearly doubled, rising to 971 from 437.
Nationally, the most recent data is from 2008, when Statistics Canada reported that knives, not guns, were the most common weapons used in violent crimes.
From 1985 to 2008, the most common cause of violent death has seesawed between stabbings and shootings.
StatsCan
figures show that while gun-related deaths nationally have averaged 1,300 a year for the past 25 years, three-quarters of those were suicides.
Our proximity to the U.S. likely explains why we talk more about guns than about knives.
But in Britain, which has similar gun laws to ours, knife violence has been a top-of-mind issue since consistently setting record highs over the last couple of years. Last year, use of knives in sexual assaults increased by 25 per cent, and in robberies it was up by nine per cent, according to the U.K.’s Home Office.
A CNN
investigation suggested some reasons when in 2019 it found a correlation between the incidence of knife-related crime, the poorest neighbourhoods and a reduction in police officers.
To bring it under control, Britain has banned sales of some knives and restricted sales of others to adults only. Recently, the government introduced a bill that would give police more power to search for and seize knives.
That, of course, would likely find stiff opposition here given the defund police movement and calls for fewer street checks, not more.
The problem here isn’t new. During his years policing on the Downtown Eastside, Addison said hundreds of people told him they carried knives for personal protection.
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