COUNCIL REJECTS DRUG CRACKDOWN

Police Bid To Fund Downtown Eastside Cleanup Fails

Vancouver's new left-wing city councillors were accused of being murderers
and liars by an angry crowd from the Downtown Eastside Tuesday as they
considered a police request for $2.3 million to clean up the area's drug
market.

Council eventually voted unanimously and without debate to deny even
partial funding to the police initiative.

But before the vote, in the ugliest scene at city hall since the November
civic election, the now-dominant Coalition of Progressive Electors and, in
particular, Mayor Larry Campbell were heckled for having allowed the police
crackdown to start.

"You're killing these people," screamed David Cunningham, from a group
called the Housing Action Committee, which is affiliated with the Vancouver
Area Network of Drug Users.

"They're dying because you refuse to act. Look at that f------smirk on his
face. Our suffering is not an experiment."

Vancouver police started an unprecedented crackdown Monday on the open drug
market on East Hastings Street, tripling the number of officers in the area
and using horses, motorcycles, cars and foot patrols.

But not everyone is opposed to the increased police presence in the
troubled area. Reaction from some members of the public has been
enthusiastic, with people waving to police and honking horns in support as
they pass them on the street.

But at the council meeting, the group of approximately 30 protesters, some
of them former Woodward's squatters, some longtime Downtown Eastside
residents, blasted Campbell for going along with the police plan. Campbell
at first asked security officers to eject Cunningham, but he eventually
just sat back and let everyone say their piece.

Campbell said Monday that police should be allowed to try their strategy as
an experiment, just as the city will try a safe-injection site for drug
users as an experiment.

"We're not insects, this is not an experiment," said Cunningham, who went
on to say Campbell was a liar.

"He said he represented the Downtown Eastside. He exploited us."

Others, including Robert Weppler and Thia Walter, added equally bitter
comments: "We keep having this illusion of four pillars but all it is is
just cops; you promised us January 1 there would be a safe site" and "we
voted for you." Others chanted "Safe site now, save lives now."

VANDU representative Ann Livingston, taking a relatively more diplomatic
approach, said that the police plan is violating what people thought would
happen under a four-pillar approach.

"We understood that no police officers would be added to our neighbourhood
until there was a safe site," said Livingston. "None of us can even believe
this is happening with a COPE council. But you guys are courageous. I know
who you are. Do the right thing now."

Livingston said police are indiscriminately harassing people.

She said evidence from other studies shows that the more police action
there is on the streets, the higher the disease rates, because addicts are
too afraid of being stopped by the police to go to health services.

Cunningham also said a survey done in the last week in the Downtown
Eastside, released by the Harm Reduction Action Society, said that out of
209 addicts interviewed, 67 per cent had had their drugs confiscated by
police recently. The consequences of that were that one in 10 said that, in
order to get more money for drugs, they either prostituted themselves or
committed a crime.

That means the current police crackdown is just going to produce more
crime, he said.

Senior police officers who came to the council budget meeting were
philosophically polite about the decision on the funding and the protest.

"It is council's decision to set the level of policing in the city," said
Inspector Bob Rich, who is in charge of the district that includes the
Downtown Eastside.

"My sense is they are concerned about the impact so they want to see what
the effectiveness is."

Rich said the police will definitely continue with the first 90 days of the
crackdown out of the existing police budget, as promised, and they'll do an
evaluation to see what is working and what's not.

They may abandon it if it's not effective, come back to council if they
think it is, or look at trying to continue to fund it internally, he said.

Rich said police will get a graduate criminology student to help assess the
impact of the crackdown as part of the evaluation, along with looking at
property crime and calls to police from the area.