Chinese do the money laundering and gangs in Richmond? Former Vancouver Police Officer Andy Hobbs: This is a dangerous idea.

The retired Vancouver Police Superintendent Andy Hobbs announced that he is seeking a seat on Richmond City Council in the upcoming by-election.

Andy Hobbs is a retired Superintendent with the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) with over 35 years of policing experience. In his career & as a member of the VPD’s Executive, he’s worked with community groups, stakeholders, police agencies and governments to strengthen public safety.

Andy claims to be a pragmatic leader who can respond to challenges in a balanced manner, proficient in management, policy and budget monitoring. Recently, he accepted our exclusive interview, in which he responded in detail to some hot topics of public concern.

Q: For now, what problem do you most want to solve for the residents of Richmond?

Andy: One of the first things we have to do is navigate our way through the COVID-19 pandemic. We have to get through COVID-19 as safely as possible for all our citizens.

That means we have to continue social distance. We have to continue following the public health guidelines by doctor henry and the ministry of health. We must wear our masks and all of those things. Because when we do that, we protect one another.

I think that Richmond is the model for Canada in several ways. I think the Asian population has been quicker to embrace some of the safety protocols, particularly wearing masks.

We do have the longest life expectancy in all of Canada. We have that before COVID-19. I think we’ll have that after COVID-19, that’s for many reasons, but Richmond emphasizes healthy living. We should continue to do that. The other thing that Richmond has going forward that we can model and highlight to the rest of Canada. And you probably know this, we are the most diverse city in all of Canada. So diversity is a strength, and Richmond is more reflective of the world through its diversity. And that is a strength.

But I think when the whole population sees people doing that, it makes it better, makes it more acceptable that makes it more common.

I think Richmond that we’re doing quite well compared to other communities, but we want to do everything well.

We need to consider how to help individuals and small businesses in Richmond survive the COVID-19 period. Because this has been a very hard time for a lot of individuals who perhaps lost their job or lost portions of their revenues, their mortgages to pay food, to buy other expenses, small businesses have gone out of business or suffering greatly because of lost revenue.

In addition to that, they’ve got added expenses from COVID-19. If they manage to stay open, they have to buy protective equipment, masks and sanitize things like that. So they got out of expenses and decreased revenue. And expenses have continued, property taxes — that kind of thing.

So what can the city do to help people in those situations? I think the city can help people. We should be looking at things like a flat tax rate increase like no increase for 2021. We should look at deferring taxes again in 2021 with no penalty. And so people can take more time to get back on their feet from COVID-19.

We can also look at things like grants for small businesses. I strongly encourage City Council to establish a Covid Relief Grant for Small Business that can provide relief to locally owned small businesses so that they can purchase or in some cases, reimburse them for buying Covid-19 safety equipment such as plexiglass, sanitizer, masks, etc.

If elected to Council, I would ask fellow councilors to set aside $1 million and allow eligible small businesses to apply for a grant of up to $1,000. First of all. The city is relatively healthy in the financial sense. We have a significant reserve. And we have the rate stabilization fund. I think that this is a crisis. It’s a crisis here, and we want small businesses to survive and try because that’s a big part of Richmond. We should look at using some of those funds now. I know it is time.

Q: Some residents want to ensure that the police have sufficient resources to deal with the rising crime rate. Now that you have a lot of work experience in the police station, what do you think about the security issues in Richmond?

Andy: For policing and for the crime, I will say first that which is a relatively safe city in terms of crime when you compare it to the rest of Metro Vancouver, our crime rate continues to be on the reasonable side.

But having said that, there are still crime issues in Richmond. There is organized crime. I think we just had a shooting. There are drug labs, and drug labs are very dangerous situations for the neighborhood, and you don’t want that in your neighborhood.

So there are some keys to success when it comes to policing and keeping a community safe. And one of them is to have an effective community policing model. Community policing is the key because policing in Canada and Richmond depends on the voluntary compliance of the overwhelming number of citizens, which helps police be successful. So we do it in partnership with the public.

For the Council, the key is providing the resources, money, budget so that the police can effectively do their job. That elementary budget, having an adequate budget allows police to have partnerships. When there are Social crises, people are having mental health issues or drug episodes, and the police are often called to respond to that. Maybe it’s 2:00 in the morning when very few other people around. It’s really important to have a police partnership in a car with a site nurse, for instance, a trained nurse to respond to those. Partnerships with agencies like ICBC for road safety is crucial. Partnerships with the school district, other police agencies are other examples. There are all kinds of examples of partnership.

When it comes to organized crime, I in the VPD was a superintendent and a member of the executive when we had a number of shootings and homicides and gang violence, organized crime, and violence. So I became the superintendent in charge of developing our first uniform gang task force.

In a nutshell, within two weeks, We started to push back and organize crime and gangsters where they work, where they work out, where they play, where they go to have restaurants, where they’re going to meals. This is a uniform gang task force, identify the gangsters and go after them where they are. The idea actually is to target them for enforcement and investigation and arrest them for anything you can. If they go through a red light, they get a ticket. If they assault somebody on the street, then you wrap them for assault. So it’s not necessarily dealing with the shooting or dealing with the drug law. The right away is dealing with smaller things and making it not conducive to doing business in your city.

I can say the one thing I would advocate for strongly if I were on Council because the police station is way down at the south end of Number Five Road, that’s quite far away from the town center. Probably not an ideal location, a lot of traffic around there as well.

Since it’s not in the center of town, we need more community policing stations, and two areas that I advocate putting them in right away would be somewhere around the Aberdeen area. The other area would be the Hamilton area, because you need a high police presence and cut down on the travel time.

The Aberdeen area. The sky train goes through there. A lot of people use the sky train to come into Richmond, some of them bring crime. Some of the crimes committed around Richmond can be intensely populated areas around the sky train stations and around the high rises and where many people live. Police presence and having a community police station allows you to do that. It also allows the community to participate in the community police station right there.

3. Q：Some people say that behind money laundering and organized crimes in Richmond are Chinese gangs and corruption from China. What do you think about this?

Andy：It’s always dangerous to associate a crime or criminal activity or gangsters to a particular group. The mafia is originated from Italy. Every crime or every country in the world has an organized crime. Crime is a crime, Whether somebody has to be a German ancestry, Chinese ancestry, African ancestry, English ancestry, Scottish, whatever. So I don’t think we should associate them with the Chinese community. I think that’s wrong and misleading. It will take you down a dangerous path. It will not produce good results because you’ll be focusing on the wrong thing.

And so no particular group bring them, but we should be careful to avoid stereotypes and blaming anybody based on their ethnicity or race for a crime. And that is just wrong and silly.

Money laundering is a serious issue. I think the River Rock Casino is taking steps to deal with it. I think there will be further regulations and legislation to deal with ensuring that problem is avoided in the future already avoided.

I like to point out that the River Rock Casino is a legal business. And it provides the service to people to enjoy that type of activity. And the River Rock Casino also has contributed to the community. They have been a supporter of different things in the community when they can be. And so they try to be good community property as well. Now, money laundering has been an issue as well. We can do two things. We can have them as a good corporate citizen, and we can deal with the money laundering organized crime aspect to make that better. The two things can both be true.

4. Q: Many Chinese have a conservative view of homeless people and drug addicts. How do you think these vulnerable groups should be treated?

Andy：I am sympathetic to that. I’ve experienced a lot of this in my career. I’ve seen different types of recovery homes work well. And I’ve seen some not work well at all. And there’s a number of factors that contribute to that.

But I will say that, first of all, I think our society, our community, our city, our province, and country, we have an obligation to do the best we can in looking after vulnerable people. And I’ve been fortunate in life. I tell myself lucky. But I’ve seen a lot of people who haven’t been so fortunate, like sometimes it’s because of the decisions they make. Sometimes it’s because of things that happen to them that they have no real failure. Children, senior citizens, women facing domestic violence, drug addiction, I think our city has an obligation to be as compassionate to them as we can.

And I think it’s important to think of compassion is a strength, not a weakness. We should be compassionate towards other people who have been less fortunate than us. COVID-19, for instance, attacks everybody with your rich, with your poor, no matter what country, no matter who you are, it can attack you. And when you have fewer resources like a homeless person or a drug-addicted person or a person suffering from mental health issues, or from a woman who is fleeing domestic violence, anything like that can just be absolutely so much worse than if you’re someone who’s fortunate to have all the resources around you that you need to be comfortable to get help.

I think that we have to bear all that in mind when we address these issues. So I work with many groups in my history. I’ve seen many tragedies. I’m sympathetic to this issue. I’m sympathetic to the people of the neighborhoods who have concerns and the people suffering. So I think there are things we can do to make these models as successful as possible.

Some of the things are based on my experience. I think we have to do and keep in mind are things like location. When you’re planning a shelter, whether it’s for recovering drug addicts or whether it’s for battered women, I think it’s important to choose the right location. It might not be the best thing to put a recovery home in the middle of the neighborhood.

Another thing that’s important is having the right size. If you build something too big with too many units and too many clients, it could be a recipe for problems. You have to have the right size, the right number of units in whatever home it is, located in the right spot.

The other part of it is transit. It includes access to things like medical services, counseling services. You don’t wanna have it too far off the people that generally don’t have cars. And a lot of people may have mental health issues as well.

The staff to client ratio has to be right. And it has to be the right mix. You have to have staff for medical treatment and support, social services and counseling, you have to have a security component, it has to be a secure site for the people living there and for the community. It’s all about the balance. All about being respectful of your neighbors. It’s about having the right balance in all of this.

You can’t mix everybody together. You can’t have people suffering from poverty, women fleeing violence, people with drug addiction issues, people with mental wellness issues, and then people with criminal issues. You can’t mix them all together because then you put a bunch of victims at the hand of the predators in that very building. And that I have seen is just a disaster.

So it’s the right mix of the client in the right building, the right size, the right location, the right resources, right staff. And if you do that, if you do it the right way, I’ve seen it in the right way, you can have a success story. You can be proud of yourself because you helped a number of honorable people get their life back together.

And you know what? They can happen to anybody. I’ve seen people who grow up in very wealthy environments. I remember one young woman even had a pony growing up. She made a couple of poor choices. Now she was able to recover from that because she was able to get the right support. I would say it could happen to any of us. It could happen to any of our family members, regardless of your background, your social-economic status.

The drug addiction issue, or domestic violence, or mental illness, in my career, in my life, I’ve met thousands of people who those kinds of issues. And I can say almost with certainty. I’m pretty much 100% certain. I’ve never met anybody who’s chosen to be in that situation. I haven’t met anybody who’s chosen to be a drug addict or stay a drug addict. They might have made poor decisions at some point in their lives. When they can get out of it, they would get out of it.

I have a lot of experience in this area from a policing point of view, but from the policing point of view, we need to work with partners in the medical field and the psychiatric field, and the government field.