5429 replies to this topic

[LJ]

It was a stupid policy whose resultant chaos should have been easily envisioned.

 

The fact that they went ahead with this delusional plan is sufficient reason to never have an NDP government again.

[Victoria Watcher]

SF to begin arresting drug users with opening of new center: 'Get sober, get arrested or get out'

 

 

 

 

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- The city of San Francisco is laying out its official plan to combat the drug epidemic on the streets with a sobering center.

 

The city hopes the days of public drug use in San Francisco are approaching an end.

 

"Make it clear to anybody who would come to San Francisco to use drugs in public that you now have three options: get sober, get arrested, or get out," said San Francisco Supervisor Matt Dorsey.

 

https://abc7news.com...enter/18370180/

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 12 January 2026 - 06:20 AM.

[LJ]

I like it, about time.

[Victoria Watcher]

Victoria Mayor Marianne Alto shares the frustration. “You can be sure this council has had enough,” she says of Victoria being the centre of Greater Victoria’s homeless/addiction/crime triple threat. “It’s been years in the making. We have years of work ahead of us.”

 

What rankles Alto is that surrounding municipalities have not been doing their part to address the problems. Accordingly, Alto supports amalgamation, which means sharing the burdens currently on Victoria’s shoulders. She envisions three, not 13, municipalities: Core, Peninsula and Westside. 

 

“Victoria has carried the load for a long time,” Alto says, referring to Sidney’s refusal to open an overnight shelter and Saanich’s delayed temporary overnight shelter decision. “We need to have other municipalities step up.”

 

https://www.douglasm...downtown-safety

 

 

 

Lol, Victoria's problems are the fault of the other municipalities!      

 

  

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 13 January 2026 - 10:18 AM.

[Love the rock]

Alto give your head a shake you did nothing in years past except encourage homelessness from across Canada to come to Victoria as you and your famous leader Helps though you were special ferries who could create a utopia  where homeless and employed people could live happily ever after in peace.This is your battle to face no one else .  After that your  imperial leader, Eby has turned British Columbia into the fentanyl capital of the world.  Imagine that Little British Columbia, the fentanyl capital of the whole world because of this  .I will never ever forgive him for this or you for that matter.

[Love the rock]

Alto and Helps could have done an about face as soon as they say it wasn’t working but the ignored the facts.

[Mike K.]

Anywhere these facilities go, the destruction of community follows. Sooke almost lost a commercial strip mall after a homeless man set fire to the building on Christmas Night.

Businesses have been forced to close as crews work on remediation.

[Victoria Watcher]

Our solution is to spend an extra $10 or $15M to extra-police the 45 guys causing the havoc.

 

It probably will not work, but hey that's one heck of an expensive solution.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 13 January 2026 - 01:04 PM.

[Mike P.]

Hey Alto, 6 months and $10,000,000 later, how's the plan going?

 

September 2025:
The final straw was on Tuesday when she asked a man to move from the front of her location.

“He told me to f-off. He told me I was going to get hurt really bad. Then I asked my staff to call 9-1-1,” she recalled.

CHEK News spoke with a number of businesses in the area, including a coffee shop owner who said the 800-block of Johnson is out of control, and that one of his employees was recently assaulted for asking someone to leave.

Victoria Mayor Marianne Alto says she sympathizes with Keeley.

“It’s horrifying. And I feel very sympathetic, and quite heartbroken at that story,” Alto said.

Alto said she is several weeks away from updating the city’s 95-point safety plan meant to address downtown safety concerns.

The plan was originally rolled out in mid-June.

And the mayor said on July 2 that it would take half-a-year for people to notice a change downtown.

“Six months or less, yes, I’m confident in saying that you’ll see a difference,” she said.

https://cheknews.ca/...ncerns-1276357/
 

January 13th, 2026 - Arrest occurs as VicPD introduces Beat Team to media

https://victoriabuzz...team-to-media/ 

 

January 5th, 2026 - Business owner threatened with a stick

https://cheknews.ca/...ng-911-1297835/

 

January 2nd, 2026: - Assault an disorderly behavior 800 block Johnson Street
https://vicpd.ca/202...johnson-street/

 

January 1st, 2026: - Man arrested incident Uhaul truck Government Street
https://vicpd.ca/202...l-moving-truck/

 

December 26th, 2025: - Incident in Fentennial Square
https://vicpd.ca/202...tennial-square/

 

December 23rd, 2025 - Repeated vandalism at business - Man charged with arson

https://www.timescol...siness-11666052

Edited by Mike P., 13 January 2026 - 05:24 PM.

[Beacon]

 

Victoria Mayor Marianne Alto shares the frustration. “You can be sure this council has had enough,” she says of Victoria being the centre of Greater Victoria’s homeless/addiction/crime triple threat. “It’s been years in the making. We have years of work ahead of us.”

 

What rankles Alto is that surrounding municipalities have not been doing their part to address the problems. Accordingly, Alto supports amalgamation, which means sharing the burdens currently on Victoria’s shoulders. She envisions three, not 13, municipalities: Core, Peninsula and Westside. 

 

“Victoria has carried the load for a long time,” Alto says, referring to Sidney’s refusal to open an overnight shelter and Saanich’s delayed temporary overnight shelter decision. “We need to have other municipalities step up.”

 

https://www.douglasm...downtown-safety

 

 

 

Lol, Victoria's problems are the fault of the other municipalities!      

 

 

The homeless would literally joke about Victoria being the only place you will see a fat homeless person, it became the mecca across Canada (well known) and Alto/Helps rolled out the red carpet and set up a huge poverty industry all concentrated downtown.  Remember that Coalition to End Homelessness that was going to solve this by 2016?  Yes, the City of Victoria has been electing not politicians, but homeless advocates and their friends with an ideology and an industry to grow and support.

 

Well they succeeding in making the City of Victoria have the highest per capita homelessness in North America, that's not by accident.....and now they want to blame other municipalities for not sharing the load they created?  What pills are Alto taking?

[Mike K.]

The coalition’s deadline was 2018, indeed, then it was scrubbed from their website.

Lisa Helps knew exactly what was happening, and the industry being created. This is being replicated all across the content in the same fashion, at the same time. Just like protests, social movements and political attacks. It’s all the same, and all parallel.

Elon Musk just called the homelessness industry a scam, and said homelessness as a word is a propaganda term: https://youtu.be/d91...pw5qk5h1IEP3TAH

[Beacon]

no one's mentioning the news out today - BC NDP officially have ended the drug decriminalization experiment, called it a failure.

 

https://www.msn.com/...ent/ar-AA1Ue4Xh

[Victoria Watcher]

no one's mentioning the news out today - BC NDP officially have ended the drug decriminalization experiment, called it a failure.

 

https://www.msn.com/...ent/ar-AA1Ue4Xh

 

 

Surrey, B.C., mother Ellen Lin said the end of the program came too late.

She linked it to the death of her 14-year-old daughter, Emmy Liu, who died of a fentanyl overdose on Jan. 30, 2025.

"Many innocent lives were lost during those three years, especially children. What explanation does (Osborne) have for families who lost their loved ones? I think the policy is totally a failure," she said in Mandarin at a news conference in Richmond, B.C., that was coincidentally held on Wednesday just ahead of the minister's announcement in Victoria.

Lin said that allowing possession of drugs made it easier for adults to provide them to children like her daughter.

"As a mom who just lost my younger daughter, I think the policy is extremely ridiculous," said Lin. "When my child's life was in danger, I have been exploring all resources and methods to save her. I had been seeking help from the police, from counsellors and the school board. But I felt helpless. These absurd policies blocked the path to save my child’s life."

 

[...]

 

Lin said she had tried all means to keep drug dealers and bad friends from supplying Emmy with drugs, but the decriminalization program had created an “environment unsafe” for children.

She said that speaking out against the program "has become my mission and my responsibility,“ said Lin. “I terribly miss my daughter who left the world so early."

[Mike K.]

Predictably disastrous policy in every conceivable way.

It was an idea that worked on paper in the safe confines of a university. It foolishly disregarded human nature, and the exploitative tendencies of people left to their own devices, absent of repercussions for their actions and no sense of or desire for social responsibility.

[LJ]

no one's mentioning the news out today - BC NDP officially have ended the drug decriminalization experiment, called it a failure.

 

https://www.msn.com/...ent/ar-AA1Ue4Xh

It wasn't a failure, it just didn't deliver the results that they had hoped for.

 

The problem now is that the crown will not prosecute any drug possession charges, so in effect - nothing has changed

[Victoria Watcher]

The problem now is that the crown will not prosecute any drug possession charges, so in effect - nothing has changed

 

They often did not before, but they DID use it to pile on charges when they found other bad guy things.

[Mike K.]

Wasn’t one of the contentions that dealers starting dispensing up to 2.5 grams at a time, with mules carrying small amounts that if caught, they wouldn’t get arrested? Surely that strategy must now come to an end?

[Victoria Watcher]

Mounties in Prince George, B.C., say a 17-year-old has been charged with manslaughter in the death of a 16-year-old girl who suffered a fatal overdose in 2024.

They say their investigation began when frontline officers were called to a home in the College Heights area around 10 p.m. on June 26, 2024, for the girl who had been found unconscious.

Police say the girl later died in hospital and was found to have high levels of fentanyl in her blood.



https://www.timescol...-in-bc-11745551



Staff Sgt. Aaron Whitehouse, plainclothes commander for Prince George RCMP, says the girl's death had a large impact on the community and police are "committed to making every effort to ensure that our youth are safe."

They are pleased the matter will be addressed by the court, Whitehouse says in a news release.









Odd.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 16 January 2026 - 02:54 AM.

[Beacon]

They should be investigating EVERY OD death this way and charging whoever the dealer was with murder.  Surest fire way for them to not put fentanyl in the drugs or cross contaminate and much much better than just giving out free drugs and hooking a brand new generation on opioids

[Victoria Watcher]

Probably. It does seem a one-off case would be rare. I wonder if the parent or guardian is somebody with some clout.

The death was in June 2024.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 16 January 2026 - 09:34 AM.