Mayor's public disorder survey (tells all! or nothing!)

Global News' eleven o'clock gong show last night used footage from a protestor vs. police brouhaha to illustrate "public disorder" for their segment on the Mayor's recent web poll. The sad thing was that they had just used the same footage immediately prior, for their account of anti-homelessness activists disrupting a meeting at Central Library.

I came across Mayor Sullivan's web survey a month ago and immediately had a bit of the "no" feeling. My first red shot up when I saw the question: "Please indicate which of the following public disorder issues are of the most concern to you." Lumped in with a bunch of situations that scream out "Downtown Eastside" (like jaywalking, litter, open drug use) was the item "cyclists not wearing helmets."

Huh? I scratched my un-helmeted scalp. I mean, I can see how a good percentage of people would find things like public defecation, noise infractions, and excessive litter distasteful, but when one sees a hipster on Main riding without a helmet, does one think "disorderly!" or does one think some combination of "hot / stupid / pretentious / but still hot"? I mean, c'mon guys. Really.

Well, I checked out the Mayor's survey results anyhow. More than three quarters of the close to 2,500 respondents feel not only that public disorder has gotten worse in the past five years, but also that Vancouver is as risk of losing its "international reputation." (I didn't know we had one!)

The top three concerns among survey respondents are aggressive panhandling (83 % are concerned), open drug use (80 %), and sleeping or camping in public places (71 %). Obviously, Mr. Milk Jug Dude (pictured above), whose winsome mug I snapped today in a downtown park, isn't illustrating homelessness at all; he's just plain disorderly!

I just think it's a weird survey, and was probably thrown up tailor-made in order to get the Right Answers (TM) in support some turkey scheme that the Mayor and criminologist-councilor Kim Capri have cooked up just in time for Christmas.