VANCOUVER POLICE RELEASE VIDEO TO PUBLIC TO SUPPORT CRACKDOWN ON DRUG
DEALERS

VANCOUVER (CP) - Chances of the notorious Downtown Eastside becoming a
tourist mecca anytime soon are slim, but its most drug-riddled section
seems to looks better these days in a police video aimed at justifying
a high-profile crackdown on dealers.

As part of the continuing publicity campaign to gain public support
for their efforts, the police department on Tuesday made available to
the public a video of street life in the area shot prior to the
crackdown.

It's inviting people to visit the police Web site (www.vpd.ca) to see
the difference.

Critics of the crackdown, however, suggest the problem hasn't been
fixed but simply shuffled around the neighborhood.

The nine-minute video, entitled Picking up the Beat, was produced for
the police department last spring to take to city council to
illustrate the problem, police spokeswoman Const. Anne Drennan said
Tuesday.

The video features street scenes before and after the crackdown, along
with interviews with cops and grateful residents.

That neighborhood's problem was readily evident to anyone walking or
driving through the area.

At the corner of Main and Hastings, one of the roughest areas in
Canada, dozens of dealers and customers participated openly in a daily
drug bazaar, buying and selling crack and heroin with impunity.

Down any alley many people could be seen injecting heroin or cocaine,
oblivious to anything around them.

Besides the open drug dealing and use, the video shows several
night-time assaults of the kind police say have made local residents
fearful of walking the streets..

The department wanted more funding to beef up police presence in the
area, said Drennan.

The drug circus at Main and Hastings now has all but disappeared, as a
time-lapse sequence in the video showing one part of the street
suggests.

Police say the dealers have been displaced to other areas although
they're not certain of where.

Others who live and work in the area say the dealers are only moving
around, trying to stay a step ahead of the police.

Drennan said the dealers have not gone to the suburbs, but to other
areas in Vancouver and may even had moved to other cities.

"There's no question that some of that has taken place," said
Drennan.

"What is interesting is the amount of displacement that has taken
place isn't nearly equal to the number of dealers that were formerly
working in the Downtown Eastside. So where these other dealers have
gone we don't know."

Ann Livingston, project co-ordinator for the Vancouver Area Network of
Drug Users, is highly critical of the crackdown because she said
enforcement without accompanying treatment is not the answer.

"The same number of dealers are there," said Livingston, who lives in
the area. "They've moved to other areas (in the Downtown Eastside)."

The dealers, like the cops, have increased their numbers as well, she
said, adding more drug "packers" and "lookouts" to watch for the
increased police presence.

A safe-injection site for the area has been approved by Health Canada
- - the first in the country - but has not opened yet and Livingston
said that should have come first.

"If you have a crackdown and then open a safe injection site, how are
you going to get (the addicts) to come?" she said.

Kim Kerr, executive-director of the Downtown Eastside Residents
Association, concedes that residents of the area are happy about the
enforcement.

But like Livingston, he said enforcement without proper treatment is
insufficient.

City council many months ago proposed a so-called four-pillar approach
to the drug problem, involving enforcement, treatment, prevention and
harm reduction.

Kerr said the enforcement aspect is evident now but there is not
enough of the other three.

He also says that the dealers haven't moved away; they've just moved
around the area.

"The dealers are being herded around the neighbourhood," he
said.

Still, Drennan believes the police had to do something out of concern
for the thousands of area residents not involved in the drug trade.

"We had finally reached the point where we realized we had to do
something and now."

Police have asked city council for more funding to continue their
crackdown, but a decision isn't likely until the fall, after council
considers an independent evaluation of the current enforcement effort,
said Drennan.