Ken Sim Is Taking Credit for Lower Crime Rates

On Sept. 9, incumbent majority party ABC Vancouver opened their civic election campaign by dropping three ads on YouTube.

Two of the three focused on Green Party of Vancouver Coun. Pete Fry’s public safety voting record.

At the same time, ABC credited themselves for the recent decrease in violent crimes reported in Vancouver.

Fry is one of five candidates currently running to unseat incumbent ABC Mayor Ken Sim, who is seeking a second term in office.

In 2022, ABC won the election with a majority on council, the school board and the park board. Since then, five elected ABC members have left or were kicked out of the party, meaning the party currently only has a majority on council.

Recent voter polling shows Fry is more popular with decided voters than Sim.

Fry is also now the only progressive party candidate left in Vancouver’s mayoral race, after William Azaroff of OneCity Vancouver and Stephanie Allen of COPE ended their mayoral campaigns earlier this month.

ABC Coun. Peter Meiszner says it’s Fry’s public safety record, not his polling numbers, that led to ABC’s focus on him.

“It’s really to highlight his voting record on council,” Meiszner told The Tyee, adding the ABC majority council has “put a lot of efforts and resources towards public safety in the city.”

The narrator of one ABC ad says, “In the middle of a massive public safety crisis, Pete Fry cut millions of dollars from the Vancouver Police budget.”

Grainy footage of Fry speaking in council, as well as blurred faces of people committing assault and being arrested, flash across the screen as ominous music plays in the background.

The other video ad intersperses grainy clips of Fry with images of street encampments, and people with blurred faces being arrested, sitting on sidewalks or committing assault, with clips of a green park, a running toddler and the ABC councillors, Mayor Sim and Vancouver Police Chief Steve Rai opening the new Woodwards police training centre earlier this year.

“ Task Force Barrage tackled organized crime, violence and street disorder, and the new VPD training centre is bringing desperately needed change to the Downtown Eastside,” the narrator says, alleging Fry voted against against Task Force Barrage, a $5 million boost to police presence in the city’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood.

But that’s not true, Fry told The Tyee in a recent interview, because Vancouver city council wasn’t given opportunity to vote on Task Force Barrage.