STORE STAYS ON STRAIGHT AND NARROW IN TROUBLED NEIGHBOURHOOD

Proprietors Praise Crime Crackdown In Downtown Eastside

Outside the A&M Food Market at Columbia and Hastings in Vancouver's
Downtown Eastside, a wheelchair-bound aboriginal cleans out her crack
pipe.

Three men offer crack to pedestrians. Another holds a plastic bag with
two bottles of whisky for sale.

Inside, store owners Mansoor Asbaghi and Amir Zolmajd smile widely as
they show off their 2005 City of Vancouver business licence.

The Persian pair have run A&M Food Market for a year and are one of
the stores to emerge unscathed from a crackdown on businesses in the
troubled neighbourhood.

"We could sell [crack] pipes and drugs and dope but we don't," said
Zolmajd, wearing a spotless white chef's tunic. "We could buy stolen
property, too, but we don't. These stores being shut down, it's their
own fault. They are bad for my business."

The latest Downtown Eastside store to lose its business licence is
Jimmy's Discount Store, just 50 metres from A&M Food Market.

"Jimmy's was caught taking in stolen property from undercover police
officers and they've agreed to close the store permanently," Barb
Windsor, the city's deputy chief licence inspector, said yesterday.

Downtown Eastside pubs, second-hand stores, pizza shops and grocery
stores have long had a reputation as places to buy and sell stolen
property and drugs.

But in the past year city licensing staff and police have been closing
problem premises. The police gather evidence and present it to
Windsor, who takes it to council's business licence review panel.

Windsor said the review panel has recently suspended or revoked the
business licences of five second-hand stores, a pizza store, four pubs
and six corner stores. The pizza store was buying stolen ingredients,
two of the corner stores were dealing drugs, while another was selling
glass tubing and pieces of Brillo to make crack pipes. To get a
business licence, Downtown Eastside businesses must commit to not to
sell crack-pipe components.

"It's creates an unfair playing field for legitimate businesses in the
area, or for honest business people that want to move into the area,"
Windsor said. "It's an uphill battle all the time, but we are starting
to win."

Asbaghi and Zolmajd hope police win the battle against the dealers and
users who congregate in front of their store every night.

"I can only do what I can in my store," Zolmajd said. "Outside the
store is the city's problem, not mine."