Alarming law enforcement trends in Nanaimo BC
New report sheds light on concerning RCMP and bylaw officer practices in the harbour city
P.O.W.E.R and Stop the Sweeps have released a report on policing and bylaw practices in Nanaimo BC, responding to concerns raised by the Nanaimo Area Network of Drug Users (NANDU).
The report, titled Violence & coercion in the name of “safety,” highlights a number of concerning tactics used by the local Royal Mounted Canadian Police (RCMP) detachment and various, interconnected bylaw teams that are funded by the City of Nanaimo.
RCMP officers are known to routinely take cigarettes directly out of people’s mouths – under the guise of checking whether they’re ‘counterfeit’ – and weaponize this as a pretext for stopping people and seizing their belongings. Nanaimo’s “community safety officers” (CSOs) likewise seize personal belongings and coercively force people to move to nowhere in particular, which can start a cycle of criminalization and/or displacement, and people report that their belongings are almost never seen again.
At the same time, community health and safety issues, such as people going missing, inadequate warming centres/shelters during a housing crisis, and the need for overdose prevention services during a public health emergency struggle to find appropriate funding or support from municipal or provincial governments.
In October 2024, bylaw officers directly attempted to stop NANDU from setting up their nighttime pop-up OPS, which is set up during income assistance payment week to save lives. In December 2024, a volunteer helping run the site was arrested by RCMP officers.
This pattern of and reliance on criminalization in Nanaimo targets drug users, people using public spaces, and those who work to address critical health and safety needs, which exacerbates public health challenges, rather than addressing them.
The full report and findings can be downloaded here.
Looking back on the city’s community safety officer program evaluation
Two Nanaimo bureaucrats who shape the heavy law enforcement approach in the city, Dave Laberge and Christy Wood, were both previously employees of the RCMP. Under their leadership, the city hired the BC government’s former Executive Director of Policing, Law Enforcement and Security, Infrastructure and Finance to conduct an external review of the CSO program.
The external review states there is insufficient data to measure outcomes from the CSO program, and instead based its recommendation of CSO expansion on feedback. This feedback featured police, bylaw, business and neighbourhood association perspectives heavily, and did not include people most directly impacted by the violence of displacement during engagement sessions or one-on-one interviews.
The external review presented that there was overwhelmingly little-to-no progress on “improved perceptions of downtown” or in “tangible decrease[s] in social disorder” after the CSO program was implemented, according to perspectives from the 11 neighbourhood associations who did participate.
Violence & coercion in the name of “safety” fills some of these gaps and exposes more detail on what police and bylaw officers actually do in practice with the significant chunk of city resources they are allocated — bylaw programs and RCMP make up approximately 40 per cent of Nanaimo’s 2025 operating budget.
I interact with the street population often. They have a lot to say.