The sprawling homeless encampment outside Island 22 Regional Park in Chilliwack, which was dismantled in 2024, was responsible for a spike in crime that rippled across the Lower Mainland.
Chilliwack RCMP statistics presented to city council by Supt. Davy Lee at the March 5 meeting made it abundantly clear the camp was a hotbed of criminal activity at times.
“The data shows that 130 people associated with the encampment on Cartmell Road accounted for 734 police files,” Lee said, about investigations by the Upper Fraser Valley Regional Detachment last year, with most of them from Chilliwack, Lee said.
However another whopping 903 police files connected to those in the encampment were opened by other agencies outside Chilliwack.
RCMP members were able to join forces with local First Nations leadership and outreach service providers in Chilliwack to tackle the situation at the homeless camp off Cartmell Road, Lee explained.
That involved taking apart the camp in early 2024 that had seen growing numbers of unhoused people squatting in trailers, campers, and tents, as well as attracting prolific offenders well known in other policing jurisdictions.
Local RCMP successfully applied for Special Investigation and Targeted Enforcement program funding of $85,000. What was astonishing was that RCMP officers from across the region were able to co-ordinate investigations into prolific-offender activity by working on files together.
“It highlights the transient nature, with police involvement from other jurisdictions, of these individuals,” Lee said.
Lee said a “heat map” was produced for the report titled ‘Where Do Assaults Take Place?’ Shaded in bright red is showing that the majority of assaults, that occurred in open air as opposed to residences, took place on the north side of town, centred around Chilliwack proper and downtown.
To compare the annual stats in calls for service to the homeless camp, there were 195 police files opened in 2023, a sizeable spike in the rates compared to 101 files in 2022, and 91 in 2021. Of those 195 files in 2023 there were 19 crimes against the person, 26 property crimes, 31 other offences like weapons, or breach of conditions, and 120 other types of police calls for other occurrences such as suspicious behaviour, wellbeing checks, traffic files, shots fired, or missing persons as examples.
It was in December 2023, when the trespassing notice first went up at the encampment, effectively putting those camping illegally on notice they were to leave the property owned by Shxwhá:y Village. They had to clear it to make room for a staging area in upcoming flood prevention works. Officials worked with outreach agencies for months to offer those experiencing homelessness whatever health and social service resources were available to empty and take apart the illegal camp.
