MAYOR SLAMS REPORT ON POLICE CLAMPDOWN

Mayor Larry Campbell has gone on the attack against a Human Rights Watch
report critical of a Downtown Eastside police crackdown, saying the report
on abuse of local drug users isn't credible.

Campbell's staff handed out a blistering 29-page report to media Tuesday,
after a lengthy meeting between city, police, and health officials and two
representatives of Human Rights Watch, including Canadian board member and
former federal Liberal cabinet minister Lloyd Axworthy.

Campbell asked the New York-based organization to retract its report.

The mayor organized the meeting and asked Axworthy to be there after Human
Rights Watch issued a report May 7 saying a police crackdown on drug users
in the Downtown Eastside resulted in arbitrary harassment, excessive use of
force and called the police action "Vancouver's only conspicuous anti-drug
initiative."

The report, which made several references to Vancouver's hopes for winning
the bid for the 2010 Winter Olympics, also concluded that the city-supported
crackdown could result in increased overdose deaths and HIV infections.

That report, along with a commentary piece, is posted on the organization's
Web site.

Although Campbell and Axworthy made bland statements Tuesday to an invited
media audience about the importance of working together, Campbell's written
response -- handed out during the media conference --was scathing, uniformly
uncomplimentary, and occasionally quite personal.

It accuses Human Rights Watch, which investigates human-rights abuses in
places like Israel, Afghanistan, Thailand or the former Soviet Union, of
failing "to conduct even elementary fact-checking," of making allegations
about police misconduct that "appear to be unfounded," of having
misrepresented the city's efforts to create a new drug-addictions strategy,
of being riddled with factual errors, and of being more interested in its
media strategy than research.

It cites the work that Campbell and the city have done to implement all
parts of the "four-pillars" drug strategy -- a strategy that emphasizes
treating addiction as an illness and says harm reduction, prevention and
treatment should be equal pillars with police enforcement.

It also refutes two of the 20 incidents of police brutality and harassment
cited in the Human Rights Watch report, saying that police investigated one
of them and found it to be untrue, and that police said another incident
couldn't have happened because the complainant made references to leg irons
and nightsticks with blades, neither of which exist in Vancouver.

In a private interview later Tuesday, Campbell said he's "not going to
stand" for having an outside organization come to town and compare Vancouver
and its efforts to find new solutions to drug-addiction problems to a Third
World country.

"I respect Human Rights Watch as an organization, but this is not how it
should be done," said Campbell. "We are not Afghanistan. We are not a
country that tortures people."

But Joanne Csete, one of the two authors of the report, said her group has
not changed its opinion on the findings.

"I frankly don't anticipate making a full retraction," said Csete, who said
her organization will study the city's report and respond in writing later.

The Human Rights Watch report was done after several weeks of telephone
consultations with Vancouver-based groups and a four-day personal visit to
the city by Csete and another researcher, Toronto lawyer Jonathan Cohen.

Its research is based primarily on interviews with drug users and residents
in the Downtown Eastside, the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, the
Pivot legal advocacy group, and small group of health workers, although
police Inspector Bob Rich was also interviewed and numerous media accounts
are cited. The sentiments in the report largely echo those of Downtown
Eastside advocacy groups and health researchers.

The report details accounts from 20 people about police action in the
Downtown Eastside that range from kicking, hitting or stepping on people
suspected of having drugs or of challenging police to doing random street
searches where they take away people's drugs, pipes, needles and money.
Other accounts are about simple harassment: people being handcuffed for an
hour while police check computers for their non-existent criminal records or
being threatened with tickets for misdemeanors like jaywalking, walking
outside the lines of a crosswalk, or public drunkenness.

Almost all are identified only by a first name and last initial, but, in one
incident, Charles Parker, president of the B.C. Association of People on
Methadone, is quoted as saying police threatened to charge him first with
vagrancy, then with blocking a fire exit, when he was sitting on the steps
of the library -- it does not make clear which library -- reading a book.

The report also quotes some anonymous users and some named social-service
workers about the health impacts of the crackdown, who talk about people
using dirty needles because they're afraid to go out on the streets to the
needle exchange and about the difficulty of providing health services
because people are hiding out in their hotels.

The city's report challenges two of the accounts of police brutality.

One of the most serious that Csetes and her fellow researcher reported was
seeing police strip-search an African-American man on the street, who later
vomited after being pepper-sprayed by police.

Campbell's report completely refutes that account, which is the only
incident where there was enough information for police to do be able to
identify the particular incident and do an independent investigation, it
says.

The report quotes the unnamed African-American as saying, in written and
videotaped statements to police, that although his cargo pants were pulled
down while police were searching for drugs, he always had his sweatpants on
underneath. The report also notes that the man had a history of assaulting
police.

It also says that total needle distribution is up and that negative health
impacts appear to be minimal -- facts that Human Rights Watch didn't include
because it never talked to the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority.

Ann Livingston, a longtime advocate in the Downtown Eastside who works with
the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, said she was puzzled and dismayed
by Campbell's response.

"Why can't we take criticism and evaluate it and try to get the best
policing, instead of just getting defensive?"

The police crackdown, which began April 7 and is currently planned to go
until the end of July, put 40 extra officers into the Downtown Eastside with
the explicit aim of restoring order on the streets and breaking up the open
drug market, which sometimes took almost the whole block on the south side
of 100-block East Hastings.

To passing observers, the street now looks less intimidating and residents
who had formerly avoided it are now re-appearing. The initiative has
received praise from a significant number of businesses and residents.

But the crackdown has generated a major political headache for Campbell, as
Downtown Eastside groups that support him and the Coalition of Progressive
Electors during last fall's civic elections say that he was elected to work
on a comprehensive drug strategy but all he's done is allow the police to
start a mini-war on drugs.

They say that police work on breaking up the drug market should have only
been started when other parts of the strategy -- and particularly an
injection site for drug users -- were in place.

But Campbell, who has no authority over how the police conduct day-to-day
operations, although he is chair of the police board, has consistently
defended the police initiative, saying he would have liked to have have
other parts of the plan in place first in a perfect world, but that
enforcement is also needed.