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.