DISGUSTED IN VICTORIA

'Human Misery' In Downtown Streets Scaring Tourists Away

There is something wrong in this city. Blessed with natural good looks
and a charming, historic downtown core, B.C.'s political and tourist
capital is losing appeal, nonetheless. It's no secret why; local
officials don't try to deny it. Junkies, panhandlers and drunks are
growing in number and becoming more brazen. They are scaring people.

"The state of downtown is our number one issue," says Victoria Mayor
Alan Lowe, sitting in an outdoor cafe. "It's the same for tourists and
for those of us who live here. It's the fear of coming downtown."

Most Canadians probably still imagine Victoria as a quaint seaside
community, tweedy, mild of climate, with a distinct British accent.
It's still all of that. But there is more talk of "junkies" and "fear"
and "disorder," from the Mayor on down, and, correspondingly, more
worry about the city's reputation as a great place to live and to visit.

A senior provincial bureaucrat -- B.C.'s Auditor-General, no less --
is startled when addicts start injecting drugs outside his downtown
office. In February, he fires off a letter to city council, demanding
action, more police patrols.

"This is not the workplace I or my staff would like to have, and
certainly not the image we want to have about Victoria," writes Arn
van Iersel.

A U.S.-based company cancels its four-day conference in Victoria last
summer, citing "countless homeless children" as a main reason.

An event organizer explains that the atmosphere downtown "was not
relaxing and enjoyable but rather quite uncomfortable. It reminded me
of the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver rather than a world-class city."

A pair of veteran restaurateurs pulled the plug on their waterfront
business this summer, blaming "human misery and degeneracy" in the
downtown district. Other business people empathize. "I call the police
on a regular basis once or twice a day," the manager of an adjacent
furniture shop tells the Victoria Times-Colonist.

One can see why. On Thursday, a pair of injection drug users crouched
in the shop's doorway. They pushed needles into their arms. Finished,
they tossed their empty syringes on to the pavement, struggled to
their feet and wobbled off. Watching some of this unfold from across
the street was a horror-struck family of five.

One block south, in the narrow gap between a derelict building and a
parking lot, there is a busy outdoor shooting gallery. Users call it
"the pit" or "the cage."

It rivals anything in Vancouver's drug-riddled Downtown Eastside.
Except "the cage" is a short walk from the provincial
legislature.

Men and women of all description squat on dirt and rocks and inject
drugs: combinations of heroin, cocaine, crystal methamphetamine,
prescription tablets ground into powder and then mixed with water.
Others smoke crack cocaine and crystal meth. Trash lies everywhere.

It's where I meet Codty Gray. At 19, he claims to be the youngest
person here. He says he holds a "legit" job at a fast-food restaurant,
but smokes crack to ease some personal trauma and anxiety. His mother
died of a heroin overdose 10 years ago.

Mr. Gray claims to live on the streets; outside of work, his world is
restricted to about 10 downtown city blocks that are filled with
restaurants and retail stores, many of which cater mainly to tourists.
The area is also inhabited by other drug users who leave trails of
syringes and broken bottles. Some defecate on sidewalks. "It's getting
pretty disgusting," concedes Mr. Gray. He estimates that 200 drug
users frequent "the cage" on a regular basis.

He scoffs at the suggestion, promoted by some advocates, that some 70%
of drug users living on the street had men-tal-health issues before
turning to dope. "If we have mental illnesses now, it's because of
drugs."

There are other notorious hangouts, among them the plaza that
surrounds Victoria's City Hall. Known as Centennial Square, it seems
especially popular with boozers. They loll about a grassy knoll and on
benches, drinking. They make rude comments to passersby. They seem to
rule the place. A security shed sits outside one of downtown
Victoria's few public toilets. It's a single room, shared by men and
women. For "control purposes," I'm told. A guard warns me not to
linger there.

Kenneth Kelly is general manager of the Downtown Victoria Business
Association; his office faces directly on to Centennial Square. Mr.
Kelly is an enthusiastic civic booster and points to

many improvements the city has seen in recent years. Even so, tourism,
the city's lifeblood, is flat.

He acknowledges that Victoria needs to clean up its act. "There are
some days when I look out at the square and I think, 'This place is a
zoo,' " Mr. Kelly says. "We should not be tolerating this."

Yet it is tolerated, to some degree. "What are the options?" shrugs
Mayor Lowe. Yes, he would like to see more police officers on
Victoria's streets. A summer pilot program that diverted more officers
to downtown foot patrol was a success. But there's no money for more
hires. And the Mayor thinks it important to "strike a balance" between
law and order and respect for individual rights and freedoms.

"I don't think that grabbing people and throwing them in jail to rot
is much of a solution," he says.

Neither, he adds, is ignoring the growing drug problem. "Letting
people overdose in the streets? I don't think that's what we want,
either."

Mr. Lowe has struck a task force to identify ways to deal with public
disorder in the downtown core. An interim report is expected next
month. He concedes it will take more months, perhaps years, to address
the problem -- and, he expects, millions of dollars for more social
housing, treatment and other forms of assistance to drug addicts, the
mentally ill and the homeless.

He thinks Vancouver may be on the right track, offering such services
as a supervised injection site where injection drug users can fix in a
controlled, "safer" environment rather than in streets and alleyways.
Mr. Lowe wants to open a "supervised consumption site" where users can
both inject and smoke drugs.

But the Vancouver approach -- or experiment -- can't be called a
success. That city's drug problem is as bad as ever. Some say it is
getting worse, thanks in part to the increasing availability of user
services, most of which are concentrated in the Downtown Eastside,
where thousands of addicts live.

The drug scene in Victoria is not so concentrated; rather, it is
spread throughout the downtown core, which is small and easily
traversed on foot. There is no desire to even attempt to contain drug
use in one area. "I don't want to give any one zone over to the
junkies," the Mayor says.

So "the cage" on Store Street, where Mr. Gray smokes crack, is four
blocks west of a busy needle exchange on Cormorant Street, which is
nine blocks north of a drug haunt and former homeless encampment near
Beacon Hill Park, which is a few blocks southeast of the Inner
Harbour, where panhandlers roam, which is a couple of blocks from
Douglas Street, where there is just about everything.

There is virtually no place free from street crime and public disorder
in downtown Victoria. No one knows this any better than Inspector John
Ducker, a 28-year veteran of the Victoria Police Department. He leads
the Focused Enforcement Team, a group of 25 officers that patrols the
downtown area. Half of the officers walk the beat at any given time.

His men and women are overworked; Victoria police officers already
have one of the highest annual caseloads in the province, at about 90
each. The national average for municipal police officers is about half
that.

"Twenty years ago, we were dealing with drunks hanging around the bus
depot," Insp. Ducker says. "Now it's hundreds of drug users."

He does not have any proven answers. "Things have definitely become
worse in just the last two years. Open, intravenous drug use is now
common. It's upsetting to people who have lived here all their lives,
and to people who come to visit because it's a nice place."

It is still a nice place. Just not as nice as it used to be.