DEALERS, ADDICTS JUST MOVE AROUND

Downtown Eastside problems appear elsewhere as police crack down on drugs

Kathleen Boyes realized something different was happening in the Downtown
Eastside when she started to see the old people out and about on Hastings
Street.

They had been familiar sights in the neighbourhood that for decades has been
the home for the poor and disabled because of its ample supply of cheap
rooming houses and hotels.

But they had disappeared in the last 10 years, as a crack cocaine epidemic
turned Hastings into a busy open drug market that was threatening to people
who felt vulnerable.

But a few weeks after April 7, when Vancouver police put in a special force
aimed at breaking up the open drug market on Hastings and reducing crime,
those old-timers re-appeared like prisoners let out of jail.

"I thought a lot of these people had died," Boyes said. She is one of more
than 50 people interviewed by The Vancouver Sun for a special report on the
City-wide Enforcement Team at its three-month anniversary and as police
prepare to go to council next week to ask for $1.19 million to continue the
project until the end of the year.

But Boyes, who has managed social housing in the neighbourhood for years,
also sees a downside.

"The people I see getting moved along and harassed are probably the most
marginalized. Whenever you see some poor sucker down on the sidewalk with
his hands cuffed, it's someone who didn't have two anythings to rub
together."

Those two observations reflect two major effects of the police team's
creation.

There's a sense of a great weight being lifted from a beleaguered
neighbourhood. But it's at a cost to some people in the Downtown Eastside
and many communities outsider, as the city's dealers and addicts appear to
be simply moving around inside city boundaries.

Sergeant Tony Zanatta, who is second-in-command for the city wide
enforcement team, said he noticed the re-emergence of a group that had
disappeared in recent years from the Downtown Eastside within days after the
crackdown began.

"We knew things were changing when we began seeing the old drunks coming
back," Zanatta said. "They were afraid to walk around here before, but we've
started seeing them on the street again. It's their neighbourhood again."

People throughout the Downtown Eastside, Gastown, Chinatown and Strathcona
all say they support the City-wide Enforcement Team and hope city council
will agree next week to put up the money to continue the crackdown.

Some among those groups also express a certain grim satisfaction that other
neighbourhoods are having to deal with what they've been burdened with for
years.

For regular patrol officers, another benefit has been acting on a problem
that had been a black eye for Vancouver police.

Constable Rom Ranallo, walking the beat along Hastings Street on a sunny
Thursday this week, said the open drug market -- which for many years was
kitty-corner from the Main Street police station -- had been an
embarrassment.

Ranallo remembered going to police conferences where officers from other
agencies would say, "How can you let that happen?"

Now, he feels police have done a public service.

There are 16,000 people in the Downtown Eastside and only 4,000 are addicts,
points out Ranallo, who has worked in the area for four years. Thanks to him
and the other 60-some officers now patrolling the area, like the constable
with him, Todd Singbeil,it's now safer for all of those people, not just
some of them.

Added to that, the traffic of goods into Downtown Eastside pawnshops --
goods that are frequently stolen -- is down and there's been a minor, but
noticeable, drop in some crime rates.

Those are some of the good points. But drug dealers and drug addicts don't
just disappear. Not as long as there is both supply and demand.

And they don't appear to be going to the suburbs. Police from Surrey,
Burnaby, New Westminster, and North Vancouver -- the expected relocation
points -- all say they haven't seen Vancouver's drug problems surface there.

"We put together teams to assist the SkyTrain police because we knew they
would be coming this way and we thought we'll see an increase of crime at
Metrotown," said Burnaby RCMP Constable Phil Reid. "It didn't come out this
way."

Instead, residents and business groups throughout Vancouver are saying
they're seeing drug problems -- dealing, using, panhandling, vandalism,
shoplifting, prostitution, break and enters, thefts from autos, homelessness
- -- spring up or dramatically increase in their neighbourhoods.

The head of the police drug unit, Kash Heed, says arrests of dealers outside
the Downtown Eastside have tripled in the three months of the crackdown,
from 50 to 150.

While some neighbourhood groups say police have responded, as many feel
police are so busy focusing on the Downtown Eastside that outside areas are
being left to fend for themselves.

And they don't get the point of a police strategy that just pushes addicts
and dealers from one part of the city to another, without any apparent
long-term plan.

"I would say that a single crackdown is not really the answer," says
Gabriella Moro, who runs an English-language school at the corner of
Dunsmuir and Seymour, which has seen an influx of dealers since the
crackdown.

The displacement from the Downtown Eastside to the area immediately west,
known as District 1, has forced some shifting of officers from the Main and
Hastings area to Seymour.

Inspector Dave Jones, the district commander of District 1, said the number
of dealers hanging around a core area of 24-hour retail stores has increased
over the past few months.

"I went out there a couple of weekend ago and within the first two hours, I
checked over 20 drug dealers and 20 more ran away when we showed up. Those
numbers are way out of proportion to what we had before," said Jones.

Jones said the perception of increased activities in District 1 is
influenced, in part by heightened awareness of police activities in the
Downtown Eastside.

Within the Downtown Eastside, the police crackdown has prompted wildly mixed
assessments.

Groups that advocate for better health services for drug users have been the
most uniformly negative, saying police haven't just targeted
top-of-the-food-chain, non-addicted dealers, as they said they would, but
have simply harassed and intimidated anyone who lives in the Downtown
Eastside. The only result of that, they say, is almost certain increased
rates of HIV and hepatitis C infection, as users resort to injecting quickly
and sharing needles as they try to avoid police or being found with drug
equipment on them.

But other more even-handed observers, while appreciating the fact that the
street seems more orderly and safer, say they're concerned about a lot of
the negative consequences or the way the police initiative was started.

Inspector Scott Thompson, who surveyed neighbourhood groups last week to get
feedback, reported that even supportive groups didn't like having the CET
sprung on them out of nowhere and they didn't think police were clear about
what they were trying to do.

The police report and the Sun's survey also highlighted other problematic
effects of the crackdown within the Downtown Eastside.

- - People who run housing report they are having more trouble keeping order
in their buildings as dealers trying to get off the street push their way
in.

- - Bar owners are having to cope with an influx of dealers into their
premises.

- - Fights have become more common as gangs of dealers push into new territory
in an attempt to move away from where police are concentrated.

- - Sales of "bunk" -- bad drugs -- have become common as people buy from new
dealers.