OPEN DRUG USE, SALES END Skeptics Say Crackdown Will Simply Relocate Addicts Vancouver police say they will no longer turn a blind eye to addicts and dealers who use and sell drugs in plain view on the city's streets. "This behaviour is not OK . . . [They] will be charged," Insp. Bob Rolls, commander of the northeast district of the city, said yesterday. The new enhanced enforcement builds on a November 2005 initiative that saw police sweep the streets and alleys around the Hastings Street safe-injection site looking for addicts shooting up in public. Thirteen people were arrested and charged. Under the new program, five people were picked up between Friday and yesterday. Rolls said blatant drug use contributes to public disorder, fear of going near some areas of the city (particularly the Downtown Eastside), harms business and is disturbingly unique to Vancouver. "This behaviour doesn't happen in other cities," Rolls said. "The reason is simple: There's simply no deterrence or consequences for this behaviour [here]. We're going to be laying quite a number of charges before we see a change in behaviour." Rolls said police have met with federal Crown prosecutors and are working to have charges approved in as many cases as possible, and area restrictions (no-go zones) imposed on those convicted. Police will take a zero-tolerance attitude to anyone caught with drugs in parks or on school grounds, he said. For the past decade, Vancouver police have complained of inadequate tools to effectively attack the drug trade, Rolls said. In the Downtown Eastside, he said, users and dealers scatter when police arrive, only to return once police leave the vicinity. The primary objective of the city's Four Pillars program -- to treat addiction as a health, not a criminal, issue -- has had "unanticipated consequences," Rolls said. "There seems to be an increasing sense of empowerment or entitlement [for users to inject and smoke freely]. "Harm reduction has to be for the whole community. It can't be just for the drug user." Enhanced enforcement will go on indefinitely and apply "anywhere in the city," he said. All cases will be tracked electronically to see where they end up in the court system. Bob Prior, director of the Crown prosecution service in B.C., confirmed that police have met with officials in his office, but noted the same test will apply as it does in all federal cases: A reasonable prospect of conviction exists and it's in the public interest to proceed. "The vast majority of times we decide not to prosecute, the case simply isn't there," Prior said. "It's in no one's interest to take a case forward if we're going to lose." There is also significant skepticism about whether the police initiative will do much more than shift addicts from one desperate area to another. Ann Livingston, executive program director of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, said that what's needed is not to round up junkies and toss them in jail at an annual cost $82,000 each, but to provide them with more safe places to smoke and inject. Livingston called the police initiative a "complete and blatant disregard" for the Four Pillars principles. "It's the most regressive thing I've seen -- it's pretty pathetic," she said, noting that many of the estimated 5,000 addicts in the Downtown Eastside are mentally ill and homeless. "They don't have homes. They don't have anywhere to go to use these drugs," she said. Defence lawyer Jeremy Guild is equally skeptical. "My experience is that [police] can arrest people, but what's happened is that all it's done is move the problem from one area to another," Guild said. "How that will result in a decrease in crime, I don't know." Guild argued that pushing addicts indoors may ultimately be more dangerous since they will no longer be exposed to the harsh light of day and eyes of the public. Enforcement initiatives may "make things look prettier" but it doesn't address the reasons the addicts are there -- lack of social housing, addictions services, mental-health care and a social-safety net without so many gaping holes, Guild said. Meantime, near the corner of Main and Hastings, crack addict "Camera" said people frequent the stinking, rubbish-strewn alleys because they are ashamed and afraid. She does drugs in public, she said yesterday, because she "likes to be around other people." "They should be grateful this is where we are -- and this is where we stay."
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