BRAZEN DRUG DEALS PROMPT POLICE CRACKDOWN VANCOUVER -- The breaking point for Vancouver police Chief Jamie Graham came a few months ago when he was standing on a downtown street giving an interview to a magazine writer and a drug deal took place right under his nose. Graham broke off the interview, went over to a woman who had just bought drugs, and told her to hand them over. She refused, so Graham took them out of her hand. When Graham related this to Insp. Bob Rolls -- whose operational command covers Vancouver's Downtown Eastside -- Rolls decided something had to be done about blatant drug transactions and addicts injecting themselves in public. For Rolls, it was time to start enforcing drug possession offences again after Vancouver police had given up arresting people in the face of indifference by the courts for simple possession charges. "In the past, the Crown didn't seem to consider the difference between someone shooting up in a rooming house or at a bus stop. I felt we should become more strategic about who we were charging and we should go after people doing this in public," Rolls said Wednesday. Several hot spots -- including a park --have been identified for the crackdown. "We've had stabbings, shootings, assaults and ongoing drug transactions in a park that is still used by some families," said Rolls. Officers have been warning addicts of the coming crackdown for the past two weeks. The initiative has the backing of former Vancouver mayor Larry Campbell, who is now a Liberal senator. "You can't allow public disorder to continue," said Campbell, the author of the city's four-pillar approach to the problems of drug addiction -- prevention, treatment, harm reduction and enforcement. Campbell said he wasn't sure such crackdowns would work until he went to the 100th anniversary of the Carnegie Centre -- which offers a range of recreational, educational and social services. Last year, police had targeted drug dealers congregating around the centre. "I had old people coming up to me saying now they could visit the centre and, for the first time in years, they felt safe," said Campbell. The police will now charge anyone smoking crack cocaine or marijuana or injecting illegal drugs in public. Rolls met with federal prosecutors a month ago to revive the issue of arresting and charging those who use drugs in public and has reached an agreement on how charges could be processed. Bob Prior, Pacific Region director of the federal prosecution service, said the police spoke about the difficulties they were having controlling the open-air use of drugs in the troubled Downtown Eastside. "They said the situation is approaching the critical point and they need to create a cultural change so it's no longer acceptable to be injecting drugs in the street," he said. The Crown would proceed with charges only if there was a reasonable prospect of conviction and if the prosecution was in the public interest, he said. The charge for on-street drug use will be possession of a controlled substance -- the most minor of drug offences -- but one that can result in a six-month jail term. Rolls believes addicts will stop using drugs in public because of the threat of arrest.
No member comments available...
|