MAYOR TRIES TO CREATE A DISTRACTION

Call For Crackdown On Street Nuisances Is A Bid To Draw Attention Away
From Dismal Year

Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan says we have a serious problem with
public disorder.

Two weeks from now, Sullivan will ask council to endorse what he calls
Project Civil City.

He wants to use $1 million from the proposed Olympic Legacy Fund to
improve the handling of annoyance complaints.

It's essentially a clampdown on beggars, street drug dealers and petty
nuisances.

While proclaiming a breakdown of public order that is "the elephant in
the room that everyone tries to ignore," the mayor shouts, "Hire more
bylaw officers and prosecutors!"

At the same time, the B.C. Progress Board is urging immediate
government action to reduce the perception of crime and improve
justice by reining in lenient judges.

I think Sullivan is looking to distract attention from his dismal
first year in office, and the progress board is just plain out to lunch.

The board appears to be a law-and-order echo chamber, consisting of
former attorney-general Geoff Plant, John Winter of the Chamber of
Commerce, Mark Withenshaw of the Insurance Corporation of B.C.,
Provincial Court Chief Judge Hugh Stansfield, RCMP Supt. Marianne
Ryan, deputy attorney-general Allan Seckel, and Robert Watts,
provincial director of community corrections for the
Solicitor-General's Ministry.

Still, I'm shaking my head that so many normally smart people would
associate themselves with such a shallow perspective.

The total number of Criminal Code offences is down from a decade ago
by nearly 15 per cent. Period.

Property offences are down, violent offences are down.

Still, if your political agenda warrants, you can manipulate the
statistics and conjure a boogeyman.

But the bottom line is, the problem we face with crime is the same
we've always faced. Only there's a little less of it today.

Robert Hunter, who runs the criminology department at Simon Fraser
University and is an author of the B.C. Progress Board's report, knows
that.

He also understands there is no reason on earth at the moment to start
gnashing our teeth and wringing our hands because B.C. has become
Sodom on the Pacific.

But who wants to be the bearer of tepid news? Hunter acknowledges the
decline in crime rates but nevertheless, like Sullivan, he cranked up
the rhetoric.

I look at Sullivan's comments in the same light.

"Despite the heroic efforts of our front-line police officers,
Vancouver has a serious problem with public disorder and property
crime," Sullivan said. "It's taking a daily toll on all of us -- and
by ignoring it, we're hurting those who need our help the most."

Be still my beating heart -- the bums are taking over the city and
preventing us from helping those sick orphans!

There are far more pressing problems for the city and provincial
government to tackle than some phantom crime wave, an imaginary
soft-on-crime judiciary or a scary army of make-believe moochers.

The Vancouver police department and its fellow law enforcement
agencies across the province are doing a damn fine job most of the
time, in my opinion.

Crime is down across the board -- how often, how strongly, must that
be repeated?

Moreover, the population dynamics have changed from the late 20th
century, when there were far too many testosterone-charged young males
running around.

Also, as someone who reads judgments and attends far too many criminal
trials, I think B.C. judges actually do a pretty good job in sentencing.

Which is not to say that out of the thousands of cases heard each
year, there are not egregious rulings that are ridiculous.

But I regularly call attention to those -- precisely because they are
newsworthy in their rarity.

Yes, panhandlers, the drug-addled or the mentally ill can cause
inconvenience, civic embarrassment and tourist unease.

They always will.

We could improve social programs, create more low-cost housing, step
up services for the addicted and mentally challenged . . . there are a
host of things we could do that would be productive and help alleviate
these problems.

Spending more money to harass the poor, the disadvantaged and the
indigent isn't one of them.