NEW HIRES QUESTIONED AS CRIME RATES FALLING

While you wouldn't know it from watching the 6 o'clock news, crime across
Canada is on the decrease.

According to Vancouver crime statistics, the number of reported
break-ins-residential, commerical and vehicle)-fell 28 per cent from 1998
to 2000, while violent crimes remained steady at just under 4,000 annually
for the last three years.

The drop has prompted city councillor Sam Sullivan to ask why every
retiring police officer must be replaced and more added to the Vancouver
Police Department. But he's a lone voice on council, which recently voted
to give the department an additional $1 million to hire more personnel.

"My feeling is we do not need to be expanding our police force," Sullivan
says. "In fact, we could probably reduce it in some measure."

The police, predictably, disagree. Sgt. Ron Fairweather, who heads up the
Vancouver Police Department's recruiting unit, says more officers are
needed as criminals become smarter.

"When you look at the crimes occurring, they're much more complex than they
used to be and so is the evidence-gathering," Fairweather said.

"It was not too long ago that we'd never heard of DNA evidence. Just the
scrutiny, the investigation has to be more precise and more methodical."

That sounds like a simple case of an increase in paperwork to Sullivan, who
questions the assumption that more policing is society's best defense
against crime. Instead, since the Mayor's Coalition for Crime Prevention
and Drug Treatment found that about 70 to 90 per cent of crime is related
to illegal drugs, he says the city would do better to focus resources on
solving its drug woes, which he says is not a criminal problem but a health
and economic one.

"Don't get me wrong-we need good police and well-paid police," Sullivan
says, "[but] the police do not prevent crime. Any criminologist will tell
you that there is no relation between police and crime. Police is what
happens after the crime."

Det. Scott Driemel, police media liaison, takes exception to the idea
police don't prevent crime. "Having walked the beat for several years, you
know [criminals] won't do something when you're there on the corner, so we
do prevent crime," he said.

"But what you're talking about is enforcement versus social issues and that
starts to get very political. Drugs are a federal offence... that being
said whose responsibility is it? We have a problem in Vancouver and, we, as
the police for the city for Vancouver have to deal with it. We have to be
involved."

Driemel concedes, however, that if the drug problem were eradicated, the
force could be reduced and resources refocused on new areas of crime that
are proving to be chronic and complex, such as cyber crime.

"At the moment we're strapped pretty thin," he says. "People who've had
their car or home broken into have to wait several hours before they file a
report."

Neil Boyd, a criminology professor at Simon Fraser University, agrees that
police resources should be redirected. "There are many useful things police
do but enforcing drug laws is not one of them," Boyd says. "With our drug
situation, it doesn't make sense to spend a lot of money on officers whose
sole duty has to do with drugs. To me, it's not a question of a bigger or
smaller force but what are they doing to [alleviate] the problem."

Sullivan says he changed his mind about the value of hiring extra police
officers after council voted three years ago to raise property taxes by one
per cent to put an extra 75 to 100 police officers on the streets of the
Downtown Eastside. The $3-million hiring spree was one component of the
Mayor's Coalition paper, released in 1998.

"We hired a whole bunch of police to do these patrols and there has been
pretty well no result or no benefit whatsoever for our three million
bucks," he says. "I can say fairly and confidently that the people in
Chinatown don't believe we even have the police there. They can't tell any
difference. I look at what we're doing in the Downtown Eastside as what the
U.S. did in Vietnam. You take your best people, throw them into a war zone
but they don't know what they're there for. What were they supposed to do?
Nobody can tell me that. They were told to stabilize the area, but what
does that mean?"

Sullivan's theory about the lack of connection between police and crime
isn't new. Studies on the strength of police forces and crime rates over
the last few decades have consistently proven that crime does not drop when
the number of officers increases.

In Police for the Future, David Bayley-a professor in the School of
Criminal Justice at the State University in Albany, N.Y.-compares police
forces and crime rates in countries around the world, including Canada.

"The plain but disconcerting fact is that differences in crime rates cannot
be attributed to variations in the number of police," Bayley writes.

"Since World War II, increases in the numbers of police have closely
paralleled increases in crime rates. Detailed analysis has shown that
communities hire more police when they see crime rates rising. But this is
a desperate game of catch-up that has no effect on the rate of increased in
crime. Additional police officers do not slow, even temporarily, the rate
of increase."

Surprisingly, crime rates are also unaffected when police presence is
suddenly reduced in communities due to strikes or significant layoffs
resulting from budgetary crises, Bayley adds.

While he maintains he's not anti-authority or anti-police, Sullivan insists
it's time to rethink the role of police. "When you look at the crime rate,
the majority of crimes are committed by males 25 and under. You're better
off teaching these men civil behaviour and investing money in things like
libraries and community centres. That would be a tremendous investment.

"I'd like to see resources spent on future problems like [early childhood
development] when you can help someone before they turn into a criminal.
I'd like to sacrifice a little of our comfort level and make a difference
at another level."

That, he says, requires a fundamental shift in thinking-not only for the
police, but society.