U.S. HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP HAMMERS DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE DRUG CRACKDOWN

In the 30 days since the Vancouver police department began its
controversial drug crackdown on the Downtown Eastside, addicts have moved
to other areas, a human rights group has slammed the operation and officers
have made about 230 arrests.

On Wednesday, New York-based Human Rights Watch released a 25-page
report filled with dozens of allegations of police misconduct,
including unnecessary force, arbitrary arrests and other intimidation
tactics used by the Vancouver police department.

Information for the report was gathered from interviews and
observations by two New York researchers -- Joanne Csete and Jonathan Cohen
- -- over four days during the first week of the crackdown.

Csete and Cohen said drug users are being pushed underground for fear of
arrest, which is cutting them off from health and social service providers
and subsequently increasing their chances of transmitting HIV and other
blood-borne diseases. Increased deaths from drug overdoses are also
listed by the group as a primary concern.

But Police Chief Jamie Graham and his force said the report has little
credibility.

"Once again, we hear from outsiders who are not long-time residents of our
Downtown Eastside telling us that police should abandon the area and allow
drug traffickers and property crime offenders to run unchecked,"
Graham said Wednesday.

"The visiting New Yorkers did not take the time to interview the 99 per
cent of the residents who are true victims of human rights abuses. These
were the innocent people who were trapped in their homes and deprived of
safety and liberty because of the drug traffickers who were in control of
their neighbourhood."

Inspector Doug LePard, who is responsible for overseeing the drug
enforcement initiative, repeatedly labelled the allegations hearsay and
said many of them simply do not sound true.

"In four days of observations . . . there is only one single
allegation in the whole report in which they claimed to have witnessed an
incident," LePard said.

"Everything else is an interview of someone who says that it either
happened to them or they observed it happening to someone else, so we've
got hearsay and double hearsay."

Of all the allegations made in the report, the ones that concern
LePard the most are those surrounding health issues.

Although neither the police department nor the Vancouver Coastal
Health Authority have heard whether addicts are being forced
underground, LePard said it is an allegation he would like examined.

An allegation of a decrease in the availability of clean needles was
almost entirely discredited by LePard.

The researchers said needles were not as available because the
Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users were intimidated by police and
closed their needle exchange table at Carnegie Centre.

Vancouver has several other needle exchanges, including the Downtown
Eastside Youth Activities Society, which operates North America's first
and largest needle exchange.

Stanley deVlaming, a doctor who specializes in addiction, said the
researchers were not very thorough and seemed to have an agenda when they
arrived.

"It seems they were only in town for a few days, they only spoke to a
select few and I don't think they got the broader picture. It seems they
really didn't understand," said deVlaming, head of the division of
addictions medicine at St. Paul's Hospital.

"I'm a little surprised that New York's Human Rights Watch should be
targeting us when their own backyard is a lot worse in many regards when
it comes to harm reduction and treatment. There's very little, if any needle
exchange in the United States."

Eileen Mosca of the Grandview Woodlands Community Policing Centre, said
the Downtown Eastside's drug problem is starting to trickle into her
backyard on Commercial Drive.

There have been reports of residents being offered heroin in recent weeks
on the Drive and Mosca said shoplifters are getting more violent.

"We believe this new cast of characters among the drug dealers is a
direct result of this citywide enforcement team," she said.

Drug users and traffickers are also travelling to Surrey and New
Westminster, where police said Wednesday they have seen sporadic
increases in "transient-type" people around SkyTrain stations.

Sergeant Casey Dehaas of the New Westminster Police said a group of
people from the Downtown Eastside tried to "set up camp" in a park next
to a SkyTrain station about a week ago. They were told to move on.

In Surrey, Constable Tim Shields of the RCMP said there have been waves
of increased drug activity at SkyTrain stations there.

Since the beginning of the crackdown April 7, Vancouver police have
arrested about 145 of the 162 people they had warrants for from an
earlier undercover operation, and they have 86 new cases that were not
related to the earlier warrants. Officers have seized about $30,000 worth
of stolen property and laid 102 property crime-related charges, LePard said.