Anytime, anyplace, anywhere: Vancouver police issue warning on frequency of stranger attacks

Ray Hsu remembers being worried enough about the man who followed him off the bus to try to take a picture.

The next thing he knew, he was being attacked.

It was broad daylight. There were witnesses, but Hsu says none of them lifted a finger to help. 

That was 2017.

Four years later, Hsu still remembers the impact of the stranger's unprovoked attack.

"Definitely, for me, there were moments when it was hard for me to feel like a person who was right in the world. Especially if I was passing by the location — the intersection — where the assault happened," Hsu said.

"So I think that there is absolutely a way that requires adjusting."

Hsu was a statistic in 2017, the victim of one of 4,048 assaults recorded by Vancouver's police department — a figure that doesn't really stand out in a year-by-year comparison from 2014 to 2019, a period that saw the annual number of assaults in the city range from 3,920 to 4,535.

But in the past 12 months, Vancouver police say they have been concerned enough about the frequency of the type of assault Hsu suffered — a random, unprovoked assault by a stranger — to dig deeper into the statistics.

A review of numbers from Sept. 1, 2020 to Aug. 31, 2021, found approximately 1,555 attacks involving 1,705 victims during that time period.

"Let that number sink in," a police spokesperson wrote in a series of tweets. "The majority of victims were simply going about their day: running errands, walking, or visiting our city."

The details of the latest assaults cited by police are chilling: a man running errands had his throat cut when he was attacked from behind; an "erratic and violent male" assaulted several people waiting for the bus; a stranger reached through an open car window to punch the driver in the nose before following and tackling an elderly man.

Const. Tania Visintin told the CBC the three-month statistical review was prompted by the anecdotal observations of officers comparing notes at a daily morning meeting held to discuss the events of the night before.

"As each day was passing, it seemed like every day there was a stranger attack or multiple in one night," she said.