HONDURAN DRUG DEALERS IN VANCOUVER ARE IN FOR A BIG, MISERABLE SURPRISE

Here's the week's list of forbidden thoughts, as they related to downtown
drug trafficking.

It would be folly to suggest that every Honduran in Vancouver is a dope
dealer. It matters not that every one this police officer has met is. The
B.C. community of law-abiding Honduran folk rarely visits my patrol area.

One must not say that all Honduran drug dealers look the same.

They're shorter in stature, to be sure, but the rest is all over the
physical feature map.

They tend to dress in street-gang chic: baggy jeans and sneakers, athletic
tops with American sports-team logos, do-rags, caps on backward or sideways.

This is merely because they have fashion sense and aren't hurting for money.

Between the welfare coin and the cocaine income, they could afford to dress
in silks and slippers.

Skin colour may be a taboo topic, but here it matters little. Police ID
patterns are never limited to dermal tone.

Even if we were to shrink our focus that way, Honduran folk don't all look
alike.

Labelling them arrogant and violent doesn't make them unique, though their
threats to local residents are singularly upsetting.

The so-called "cocaine corridor" encompasses an area populated by decent
people -- students, office workers, business folk, residents and
passers-through.

Anyone wandering Seymour Street (Pender to Georgia), Richards Street
(Dunsmuir to Pender) or laneways between will tell you: Honduran drug
dealers have taken over.

Businesses are withering from customer fear, but anyone standing up to
these characters will have windows broken or lives threatened.

They say as much directly to us. That police in Canada are a "joke" and
that we'll never be able to stop them.

Their boldness is based in a trafficking system that is indeed difficult to
counter.

Rocks of crack cocaine are held in sealed bundles in mouths. If the law
shows up, the dope is swallowed.

Customers depart with purchases in their own mouths.

Swapping spit is low enough on an addict's list of worries that buyers are
usually found with pockets clean.

We see enough retching to know that retrieving packages is quite routine.

What I'm aiming at, other than to lend insight, is to challenge a saying I
hear that Vancouver police are racially profiling in contacts with downtown
drug dealers.

Our approach is really a system of behavioural profiling.

That means anyone, of any description, selling dope in the cocaine corridor
is a legitimate enforcement target.

Dare I let on that we have something up our sleeve?

You can only tease an understaffed police service so much.

Sooner or later we'll gather all we have and make things miserable for the
teaser specifically.

Watch this space to see how miserable things get.