Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim announced Thursday that he is launching a “retail security task force” to combat the rise in shoplifting and help protect workers from becoming victims of violent incidents.
The task force will include representatives from the Vancouver Police Department, business improvement associations, retailers, legal experts, social service providers and the provincial government.
Over the next six months, the task force will examine the root causes of retail theft, consult with impacted businesses and frontline staff, and study effective models in other jurisdictions, the mayor said in a news release.
The task force will then deliver a report to council with “practical, evidence-based recommendations,” said the mayor, who noted in the release that VPD recorded 7,686 shoplifting incidents in 2024, an 11.7 per cent increase over the same period last year.
However, police believe the true number may be significantly higher due to widespread underreporting.
“This isn’t just about stolen goods — it’s about protecting workers, standing up for local businesses, and making sure the people who keep our neighbourhoods thriving feel safe and supported,” Sim said. “Retail theft is hurting communities across Vancouver, and we’re stepping up to tackle it head-on.”
'Threatened and attacked'
The mayor’s announcement is a direct response to a motion passed at Wednesday’s council meeting, where Coun. Brian Montague recommended a task force be created to deal with the rise in thefts.
“I actually hate using the words theft or shoplifting because it implies sort of secretly concealing an item and someone quietly walking out of a store with it without paying,” Montague said. “But what we're actually seeing is a huge impact on workers and businesses who are being threatened and attacked.”
Added Montague: “We have stores in Vancouver that are actually providing training to their employees on how to use body cameras. We've gotten to a point where retail theft has escalated to that level.”
Montague, a retired Vancouver police officer, said “a large number of businesses here in Vancouver don't expect to last the next four years,” adding that “a lot of that is due to loss from crime.”
He acknowledged the current police projects and attention his former employer is giving to the rise in shoplifting but said a task force could identify enforcement gaps, policy shortcomings and examine success stories in other cities.
The VPD recently held a forum to discuss retail crime, with Insp. Marco Veronesi sharing a story about one retailer, which operates two stores in the downtown peninsula, claiming to have had 7,800 incidents in those two stores in a one-year period.
"Of those incidents, they reported 1,060 of them to the police," he said. "We're talking 6,000 unreported incidents that I don't know about as a commander. So that highlights the importance of reporting."
Since Sim and his ABC Vancouver colleagues won a landslide victory in October 2022, the City has hired more than 200 new police officers and 35 mental health workers. Sim and Police Chief Adam Palmer, who is leaving the VPD has also called for provincial mandatory care and bail reform for repeat offenders.
London Drugs
Last fall, London Drugs' general manager of loss prevention, Tony Hunt, ," in some cases not wanting to burden police, or simply [because of] a lack of confidence in the justice system.”
London Drugs has been public about considering closing its store in the Woodwards development in the Downtown Eastside due to rampant crime and violent incidents that have targeted staff.
The atrium outside that store was the location of in October 2023 where a new public safety coalition that includes some of B.C.’s biggest retailers — including London Drugs — banded together to call on all levels of government to take action on what it said was a growing crime and violence crisis in the province.
At the news conference, London Drugs’ president and CEO Clint Mahlman demanded government and justice administration officials “step up and do their jobs to make our streets safer.”
“The escalating violence, vandalism and theft on our streets and in communities throughout British Columbia is at a crisis point,” said Mahlman, the founding chairperson of the coalition.
“Every British Columbian knows that the escalation in crime and violence in our communities has reached epidemic proportions. And it's been building for a very long time.”
The City of Vancouver is expected to open a community police centre inside the Woodward’s building sometime this month.
With files from Glen Korstrom
X/@Howellings
