‘Unusual’ ties between Vancouver police, mayor’s party scrutinized as crime analyst joins campaign

Composite image, left to right: A social media picture of ABC candidate Arezo Zarrabian, the front of the Vancouver Police Department’s headquarters (Credit: Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck), a still from a campaign video posted by Mayor Ken Sim.

For the second election in a row, a senior crime analyst with the Vancouver Police Department is running for city council in a partisan campaign—raising new questions about politicization within one of B.C.’s most powerful institutions.

Arezo Zarrabian has been with the department for 19 years, but is currently on leave to focus on her latest council race under Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim’s ABC party. She previously ran with the Non-Partisan Association.

Zarrabian’s work has featured in both of her campaigns. She identified the city’s spike in stranger assaults that became a key issue during the 2022 election, and the mayor recently credited Zarrabian’s analysis of crime and disorder surrounding the Thomus Donaghy Overdose Prevention Site with helping inform council’s decision to close the harm-reduction facility.

• Stranger assaults had plummeted months before Vancouver’s 2022 election. Why didn’t anyone know?

The candidate told CTV News her career makes her particularly suited to address some of Vancouver’s biggest problems.

“Looking at crime rates in the different neighbourhoods in Vancouver, I think that comes in handy,” Zarrabian said.

“It’s not just the crime aspect, it’s the policy. How does it affect families? How does it affect business? How does it affect your neighbourhoods? That’s why I think I’m actually a really good candidate for city council.”

The Thomus Donaghy facility—which also faced significant opposition from neighbourhood residents before Sim and his ABC councillors voted to shutter it in 2024—was the only overdose prevention site in the heart of downtown Vancouver.

Health officials have urged the city to open an alternative location, warning the broad surrounding area recorded the second-highest rate of fatal overdoses last year, behind the Downtown Eastside.

Party’s ties to police ‘unusual’

The Vancouver Police Department’s politics came under increased scrutiny after the 2022 election, when the Vancouver Police Union broke from tradition and endorsed Sim for mayor.

The police budget has ballooned from $341 million to $497 million since Sim and his ABC-majority council took office.

This October will also mark the third election in a row that ABC has fielded a candidate who is a current or recent VPD employee, something political scientist Stewart Prest called “unusual” in Vancouver politics.

“We certainly haven’t seen a single party so consistently identify with the police service,” Prest told CTV News.

He noted the police budget also “seems to be treated differently” than other services, which he suggested is another reason to scrutinize the apparent closeness between ABC and the department.

“Why is ABC paying so much attention to police funding even as it cuts in many other ways?” Prest asked.

The mayor’s “Zero Means Zero” budget, which froze property taxes for this election year, forced steep cuts in parks, planning, sustainability and other departments—and originally would have seen baby changing tables removed from city restrooms until the proposal was met with public outcry.

• Plan to remove change tables from Vancouver public washrooms scrapped

Meanwhile, the same budget increased police spending by $50 million.

While the police union is not endorsing anyone in 2026, it has reshared social media posts about Zarrabian’s ABC candidacy and an ABC attack ad against mayoral challenger Pete Fry.

After CTV News asked the union about its social media activity, the VPU account went on to reshare a post from the Vancouver Liberals as well.

The union has also sent five safety-related questions to every candidate for mayor and council, and will be posting their answers on a website it launched called Vote Public Safety—something Prest called “completely inappropriate.”

“We expect the police to fulfill their duties as they are assigned by the state. When the police start holding candidates to account for their positions, we have essentially reversed the line of accountability,” he said.

Prest argued it’s different for a police union to get involved in politics than other unions, in part because many members are armed and have a unique authority “to enact the force of the state.”

VPU president Jason Chan told CTV News he doesn’t view the survey of political candidates, launched weeks before an election, as a political act by the union.

Optics for police crime analysis

It’s crucial for public institutions such as police departments to be “as complete and careful and dispassionate as possible” in the way they both collect and present data, said Mark MacLean, a former mathematics chair at the University of British Columbia with an interest in data analysis.

MacLean cautioned that having someone like Zarrabian who is responsible for analyzing crime data repeatedly running for political office then returning to work could impact public trust in the police.

“Has it made the office itself political in people’s minds?” questioned MacLean. “I’d worry about that.”

He stressed that he was not impugning Zarrabian’s work or political positions, but said her public endorsements of partisan electoral platforms raises fair questions that her employer must answer.

“How does that affect the public’s perception and trust of the reports that are produced?” MacLean asked. “Ultimately the integrity of the police department is the police department’s issue that they need to manage.”

• ‘I can’t think of a better location’: Advocates want Yaletown overdose prevention site to remain

Police Chief Steve Rai declined an interview with CTV News, but agreed to answer questions by email. Rai said anyone with concerns about impartiality could “make a formal complaint” to the department.

“We have processes to examine those complaints,” he said.

Asked if Zarrabian will be welcomed back into the same role a second time should her latest campaign be unsuccessful, Rai said: “Arezo is currently on leave as per the regulations around employees seeking office. An employee on leave can return to the workplace after their leave is over.”

For her part, Zarrabian agreed there’s “no room for biases” while dealing with crime data, and said that was a key component of her training and accreditation.

“They actually really focus on not having a political-leaning bias when looking at the data,” she said. “That’s how we model our intelligence-led policing in the city, and that’s what we’re known for.”

City councillors are allowed to maintain careers outside of city hall. CTV News asked Zarrabian, through the ABC communications team, whether she will continue working at the VPD if she wins a seat on council, but did not receive a response by deadline.

Stranger assault scare

Part of Zarrabian’s job is to monitor crime trends in District 1, which encompasses most of the downtown core.

That’s how she flagged a surge in stranger assaults during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting the Vancouver Police Department to study the issue more closely.

Police ultimately came to an estimate that an average of 4.2 of the random attacks were happening per day across the city, a startling statistic that was publicized the fall before the 2022 election.

Sim cited that figured repeatedly on the campaign trail, promising to address public safety, in part, by hiring 100 new police officers.

What the public didn’t know was that the frequency of stranger assaults had already plummeted by more than half—from 4.2 per day to 1.8 per day—in the first half of 2022, months before voters went to the polls.

Police did not share that follow-up data until fall 2023, while the hiring of those 100 officers was well underway.

• ‘Fear and anxiety’: The untold story of the Vancouver Police Department’s stranger assault scare

Zarrabian discussed the same troubling statistic during her own 2022 campaign, including in Conservative MP Aaron Gunn’s controversial documentary “Vancouver is Dying” and at a public safety forum.

“I identified the four stranger assaults that nobody seemed to really pay attention to until it hit the mainstream,” Zarrabian told the forum. “Your chances of being victimized is one in four now.”

Asked if she also noticed the frequency of the attacks had been sharply decreasing before launching her campaign that year, Zarrabian told CTV News there was no such drop in the area of the city she monitors, which includes the Central Business District, Yaletown, the West End, Coal Harbour, and Stanley Park.

“In my purview of District 1, which is what I was responsible for, I was not seeing that decrease—in fact, we were still seeing an escalation to the point where we actually had to deploy extra boots on the ground,” Zarrabian said. “There is data behind that if you wanted to follow up.”

CTV News asked the candidate to provide that follow-up data, but has not received it after several days. This story will be updated if a response is received.

Zarrabian said high-level decisions around compiling and publicizing stranger assault data came from the VPD’s Planning, Research and Audit section and the communications team, and that she had no say in the process.

“That’s beyond my purview,” she said.

A report from the police department determined the spike in stranger assaults was likely caused by a combination of pandemic-related “mental health pressures” and the fact that empty streets provided “increased opportunities for violence.”

The subsequent decline was credited to factors outside the department’s control, including the “return to pre-pandemic daily routines” leading to “more pedestrians and increased guardianship within public spaces.”

Work celebrated by chief

Maintaining a career in data analysis for nearly two decades suggests Zarrabian is good at what she does, McLean opined.

In May, she also received the Chief Constable’s Commendation, an honour bestowed on police officers and civilian staff who “demonstrate skill, judgment, dedication and/or integrity in their performance of duty.”

Rai told CTV News he was unaware Zarrabian was considering another political campaign when he chose her for the commendation—and that the VPD’s public relations team was also unaware when it highlighted the honour in a social media posts in August, one week before Zarrabian’s candidacy for ABC was announced.

“The VPD has been publicizing the commendation award winners since May,” the chief added.

While it’s not uncommon for people with law enforcement backgrounds to run for office, Prest said it’s important for a healthy democracy that police departments vigilantly avoid any perception that they might favour one side over another in a political debate.

“It can lead to a kind of chilling effect, where people may start to think twice about whether they feel comfortable engaging in that political debate for fear of falling afoul of the police service,” he said. “It tends to undermine the idea of holding council to account and the police acting without fear or favour in the conduct of their duties.”

Prest noted it’s also normal for police departments to advise local governments on matters of public safety—as long as they’re not the ones dictating policy.

“At a certain point that ceases to be a democracy,” he added. “This is a slippery slope argument, but it is a very long and dangerous slope.”

With files from CTV News Vancouver’s Lisa Steacy and Isabella Zavarise