Vancouver police chief announces retirement

After a decade at the helm, Chief Const. Adam Palmer announced he will be retiring months before his contract expires. Is a run for office in his future?

Chief Const. Adam Palmer will retire from the Vancouver Police Department at the end of April, he announced Tuesday.

The chief said the decision was “100 per cent on his terms and timing.”

Palmer has served with the department since 1987 and been the city’s top cop since 2015, making him the VPD’s longest-serving chief.

“It’s been a privilege, an honor and truly humbling experience to serve the people of Vancouver,” he said. “Every day I have the honour of working with the finest people I have ever met. The exceptional men and women of the VPD, sworn police officers and civilian professionals, are everyday heroes.”

Palmer’s current contract was set to run to the end of September. Asked about why he’s retiring before his contract is up, Palmer said he is satisfied with the state of the department but also said he is leaving to pursue an “opportunity” that he wants to explore.

“I’m not confirming anything right now. I’m not going to talk about what I’m doing in the future. So, you can try asking 10 different ways, but I’m not telling you,” he said when asked whether he is leaving to make a run for office with the federal Conservatives.

While there will be a nationwide search for Palmer’s replacement, he said he was confident his successor would be one of his three deputy chiefs.

Palmer was joined by Mayor Ken Sim, who got the Vancouver Police Union’s first-ever endorsement as a candidate in 2022, prompting concerns about an increase in politicization in the department.

“I want to thank Ken Sim for his unwavering support and leadership, for focusing the City of Vancouver back on public safety and bringing common sense back to city hall,” Palmer said.

Sim was effusive in his praise for Palmer.

“Adam is one of the best leaders I’ve ever had the privilege to see in action and work side by side with,” the mayor said.

“Not to make you blush once again, but you’re a role model, a mentor, a teammate and a friend. Thanks for being nice to the new kid when I got elected. Thanks for being awesome,” Sim continued.

No regrets

Asked if he has any regrets as he reflects on his time in the department’s top job, Palmer said no.

“All of it forms who you are as a leader and who you are as a person,” he said. “When you’re dealing with people in times of crisis, things will go sideways sometimes. And I think that in these roles, when you take on these leadership roles, you have to realize that you’re not always going to make everybody happy. If you wanted to make everybody happy, you’d sell ice cream for a living. But that’s not what I do, and I have to make tough decisions.”

Both Sim and Palmer described the two-year period leading up to the last municipal election as among the most difficult of the chief’s tenure, citing the impacts of the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis on the city and the department.

“We went through one of the most challenging periods in history for policing, for public safety, between 2020 and 2022. With COVID-19, with George Floyd, with all that nonsense about defund the police. You guys remember that? Something happens in another country, and the response by some people in Vancouver is that we need to defund the VPD,” Palmer said.

Asked to describe one of the toughest decisions he had to make as chief, Palmer referred to this period. In 2020, then-mayor Kennedy Stewart and council voted against the VPD’s request for $5.7 million in additional funding for the following year, citing the need to make across-the-board cuts in light of the financial pressures of the pandemic.

Palmer said launching an appeal of council’s decision – which was ultimately successful – was among his most difficult decisions as leader.

“When you do an appeal like that, it does create some acrimony amongst the parties involved, and that was an intense period of time,” Palmer said.

The conflict over the budget occurred against the backdrop of swelling support for calls to reduce police budgets and an international conversation about systemic racism in policing highlighted by Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of Floyd’s murder.

Palmer described the suggestion that systemic racism was an issue in Canadian policing as “offensive,” despite several high-profile incidents, including the wrongful handcuffing and detention of an Indigenous man and his 12-year-old granddaughter outside of a downtown bank and the wrongful handcuffing and detention of B.C.’s first Black Supreme Court judge on the Stanley Park seawall.

During this time, Stewart would end up stepping down from his role as spokesperson for the police board, citing an “indefensible lack of action on systemic racism” by the department.

Sim described this period as one during which the department was not adequately supported by the municipal government.

“I’m not litigating the past, but there were times where the VPD was not supported as much as they should have been, and you didn’t complain about it,” the mayor said, addressing Palmer.

“You basically led with a lot of class and dignity, and especially when your team wasn’t supported – you supported your team in the face of adversity.”

The search for the next chief will be led by the mayor, with the assistance of an executive recruitment firm and two members of the Vancouver Police Board. If a new chief has not been hired by the time Palmer steps down, the role will likely be filled on an interim basis by the department’s second in command, Deputy Chief Const. Steve Rai.