VANCOUVER POLICE REQUIRE MORE MONEY FOR DRUG FIGHT

While Vancouver city councillors are struggling to keep a lid on this
year's budget, Vancouver police will be going to city hall Thursday to ask
for $2.3 million to pay six months' worth of overtime for a plan to clean
up the Downtown Eastside's open drug market.

In addition, police managers are also asking for 27 new civilian staff,
$46,000 for a strategic-issues management consultant, $15,000 for "advanced
security clearances" and $380,000 in funding taken away for a previous
special project.

A report going to councillors Thursday from Inspectors Bob Rich and Doug
LePard says a special three-month project aimed at "disrupting the open
drug market and interrupting the cycle of crime and drug use" in the
Downtown Eastside will be starting April 7.

But police will only be able to staff that for three months out of its
existing force.

After that, says the report, if the city wants police to maintain the
project to the end of the year, it will have to be done by paying overtime
to a 45-member task force that is being drawn from community policing
offices, school liaison, and other departments.

And, if everyone agrees that the project is working, Rich and LePard say
council will need to provide more money in 2004 to hire 44 new officers in
order to make it permanent.

They say their plan is aimed at providing the enforcement pillar to
Vancouver's four-pillar drug strategy and that requires a much higher
physical presence on the street, along with extra staff to go after problem
businesses.

"We require a much greater visible police presence in the [Downtown
Eastside]," they say. "Police officers currently find they are driving from
one crisis to another."

They add: "The experience gained from New York's policing initiatives have
shown that a constant police presence in areas of concentrated crime and
disorder has a dramatic positive effect."

They say the recent police effort to clean up the corner of Main and
Hastings is a small but telling example of what can be done with aggressive
policing.

For the last several years, the corner was home to a regular crowd of
anywhere up to 100 drug dealers and users. After police decided to maintain
a constant presence there as of last November, the crowd dispersed, mainly
moving half a block west to stand in front of the Brandiz Hotel. It has
also resulted in a movement of part of the drug trade even farther west,
with police now starting to pick up more dealers at places like the corner
of Seymour and Dunsmuir.

Although to some, that doesn't seem like much of an accomplishment, police
have said that moving the market even that small distance is a sign the
police can have an effect.

"Obviously, to dramatically change the current pattern, we will need to
place officers wherever the open drug market is or moves to," the report says.

City manager Judy Rogers has suggested that councillors defer Thursday's
budget requests until April 8, when a revised budget plan will come forward.

The police plan has already drawn some criticism from parts of the
community. City AIDS groups issued a news release last week, saying that
aggressive police enforcement just drives addicts into higher-risk
situations and prevents them from accessing the needle exchanges and other
services in the Downtown Eastside.

They say police should be developing a plan that works in cooperation with
a strategy to improve addicts' health, not starting single-handed
initiatives that defeat that goal.