200 POLICE WILL BE ADDED, MAYOR SAYS

Larry Campbell Leads Forum On Neighbourhood Safety

VANCOUVER - Faced with rising public concern about crime, aggressive
panhandling and what some Vancouver residents say is general lawlessness,
Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell promised this weekend to increase the city's
police force by 200 officers.

Campbell, who led a city forum on "neighbourhood safety and livability"
that attracted 250 participants, promised at the end of the four-hour
session that he is "committed to having this police force reach the
national average" of police officers per population.

Campbell said he thought that would mean having a city police force of
1,320 sworn officers, compared to the 1,124 that are now authorized.

He didn't say over what period of time that would happen.

Campbell also said the city needs to work toward strengthening
neighbourhoods, lobbying senior levels of government for more affordable
housing, and helping young people, who are increasingly turning to street life.

Campbell's statements came at the conclusion of a Saturday morning forum at
the Roundhouse Community Centre, where participants were split into
discussion groups to come up with recommendations to address the problems.

The wildly diverse groups, ranging from full-time "binners" -- poor and
homeless people who scavenge in dumpsters for a living -- to business
association representatives, talked about solutions to an equally diverse
range of poverty-related problems, from homelessness to crime.

More police, more community policing, more foot patrols, more bylaw
enforcement, more aggressive action action on drug dealers and other "get
tough" measures were mentioned by almost every group.

"We would like to see the city take leadership in the problems we're seeing
everywhere -- crime, graffiti, panhandling, litter, general lawlessness,"
said Sheryl Williamson Harms, of the newly formed West End Citizens Action
Network.

The network came into being last April because of a general concern in the
West End about rising problems with break-and-enters, public drug use, and
aggressive panhandling.

But many participants also said they didn't want to see just an enforcement
approach. They said Vancouver and other levels of government need to tackle
underlying reasons for the increasing number of people living on the streets.

"There's a feeling that we have to get to the root causes for this," said
architect Sean McEwan.

Strategies like creating affordable housing, increasing the number of drug-
and alcohol-treatment resources, and low-threshold employment programs to
help get people off the street were frequent suggestions.

Jim Storie of Tourism Vancouver said his discussion group also thought the
provincial government should delay its plans to cut people off welfare.
Jennifer Campagnolo's group suggested that business groups, instead of
treating street people as the enemy, should try to involve them in taking
care of the street, paying them to clean up and keep an eye on their areas.

One of the most common -- and unexpected -- suggestions was that the city
should help empower and assist community groups so people in neighbourhoods
get to know each other, increasing their ability to protect their
neighbourhoods.

"We're strangers. We should know each other," said Peter Brown, president
of the Kitsilano Chamber of Commerce.

Campbell's promise at the end of the meeting to increase policing drew
applause from the crowd.

Chief Jamie Graham said he expects the Vancouver police force, which has
been decimated this year by an unprecedented number of retirements due to a
pension-plan technicality, will be back to its currently authorized number
of 1,124 officers by the end of the year.

Graham, who has been lobbying consistently for more officers ever since he
became police chief last year, was encouraged by Campbell's support and
said he would like to see officers added through a steady increase of 30-40
a year over the next several years.

Vancouver currently has about one officer for every 523 citizens, which, on
paper, doesn't seem that far below Montreal (one per 442) or Toronto (one
per 502).

But deputy chief Doug LePard has been making the argument to the city that
Vancouver is in a different situation than Toronto and Montreal, which have
metropolitan police forces that cover not just the central city but
suburban areas.

Although the Vancouver police force nominally serves only the 588,000
people who live in the city, it effectively deals with a population closer
to one million, based on the numbers who come in from other municipalities.

About one-third of the people arrested by Vancouver police come from
outside the city. LePard says a police force of about 1,380 officers would
bring Vancouver to the national average.

Within Vancouver, one of the areas with the lowest policing levels is the
downtown peninsula, which has almost doubled in population in the past 10
years thanks to aggressive city efforts to promote downtown living.
However, its allotment of police officers hasn't increased at the same rate.

The city forum on neighbourhood safety was initiated after a wave of public
complaints about the public homeless camps near False Creek and Chinatown
last fall and about rising levels of crime in the West End.

The political opposition on council, Non-Partisan Association councillors
Peter Ladner and Sam Sullivan, pushed the issue energetically, while some
Liberal MLAs also chimed in, accusing Campbell's council of being soft on
crime.

Campbell held a number of private meetings with community and business
groups in the fall. He said he plans to take the recommendations from this
forum and two others to be held in February and look at ways of translating
them into action.