Vancouver police are pledging more boots on the ground in the Downtown Eastside following a trio of shootings in just 15 hours.
The first shooting, Sunday around 4 p.m. near Hastings Street and Dunlevy Avenue, left a 50-year-old Surrey man with serious injuries, police said.
A few hours later, a shooting near the International Village Mall at Pender and Abbot streets left a 28-year-old Langley man and a 25-year-old Surrey man with serious injuries, according to police.
WATCH: Global News crew witnesses gunman fleeing scene of alleged shooting
Then, around 6:30 a.m. Monday morning, a Global News crew reporting in the DTES heard the third shooting and called 911 when they saw a man with a handgun flee. That shooting injured a 50-year-old man.
“We’re trying to determine whether the three shootings are linked,” said Deputy Chief Const. Howard Chow Monday.
“You’re going to see in the Downtown Eastside … an increased officer presence. We’ve also had our gang crime officers that have been moved into the Downtown Eastside, drug unit investigators.”
Chow said police are also looking at deploying a stationary “public safety camera” in the area.
Escalating violent crime
Chow said police had already seized 450 guns and a similar number of other weapons in Vancouver this year, claiming many had originated in the DTES.
While Chow stopped short of linking the shootings directly to the ongoing homeless camp at Oppenheimer Park, he said there was a “direct nexus” between growing violence in the DTES and the encampment.
“The concern is that Oppenheimer Park right now is acting like a magnet,” said Chow.
“It’s drawing the criminal element into the park that was otherwise untapped, didn’t exist before. We’re having a criminal element, the drug dealers, the predators that are moving down there because they see a vulnerable population.”
The tent city that numbered more than 200 campers inside Oppenheimer was mostly shut down after the city and the Vancouver Park Board worked to get many of the campers into single room occupancy (SRO) hotel housing last month.
WATCH: Video captures brawl, arrests in Downtown Eastside (Aired: Aug. 9, 2019)
But dozens of others have remained, and have accused the city of not doing enough to house the homeless.
Chow said police had responded to an “astonishing” 700 calls at Oppenheimer this year, including stabbings, shootings and sex assaults. He said in the last five weeks, police had been swarmed five times in the DTES while trying to make arrests.
“This is something that didn’t exist until the increase in tents, increase in numbers of people down there, and it’s at a stage very similar to a critical mass.”
Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart said he supported the VPD in its handling of the issue, but agreed the Oppeheimer issue was stressing the force’s resources.
“It’s drawing resources away from other local communities, including Gastown, Chinatown, Strathcona, so there is a lower police presence in those communities, and as such we are seeing violent crime increase, and you’re starting to see that just yesterday with these very scary shootings,” said Stewart
Calls for an injunction
Chow said the Vancouver Police Department was supportive of a court injunction to clear the park.
The Vancouver Park Board, which has jurisdiction over the park, has to this point resisted seeking an injunction to clear the remaining campers out.
But one park commissioner, John Coupar of the Non-Partisan Association (NPA), said Monday it’s time to go to court to clear the camp.
WATCH: Renewed safety concerns at Oppenheimer Park
“I’m actually calling for my fellow park board commissioners to step up and take action, I think time for an injunction is long overdue,” he said.
“As a park board commissioner I really hope the park board will step up.”
Stewart wouldn’t say Monday if he supported an injunction.
Instead, he reiterated his hope to see the park board transfer temporary authority of the park to the city, arguing the municipality is better equipped to handle the underlying social issues in the park and to negotiate with senior levels of government.
“The quicker we can return that park to normal operation the better,” said Stewart.
-With files from Janet Brown and Sean Boynton