24 HOURS IN THE RED ZONE

It truly is the heart of the city. Goods, services, office space, teddy
bears in Canadian-flag sweatshirts -- charming downtown Victoria has it all.

But just beyond the heritage storefronts and the fancy paving stones,
another kind of retailer caters to a different kind of buyer. This trade's
customers are looking for sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. And to the chagrin
of the city's image-makers, charming downtown Victoria has all three,
combined with an occasional dose of violence.

If you're poor, it's got free food and shelter, and kind-hearted passersby
who fill up your begging hat by late afternoon. If you're one of the young
travellers the police have dubbed "urban nomads," it's got recessed
doorways and free blankets at the shelter. For the addicted, it's an
affordable address and the easiest place to buy drugs and sell sex.

To the courts it's the "Red Zone" -- a one-square-kilometre area so
renowned for drug deals and prostitution that workers in both those trades
frequently find themselves banned from it as a condition of their probation.

Small wonder there's so much talk of problems in the downtown core,
including rising crime -- a 103-per-cent increase in drug offences since
1995, and a 77-per-cent jump in theft from cars.

Over the next four days, writers Jody Paterson, Louise Dickson and Gerard
Young, along with photographer Darren Stone, will take you into the city's
heart. We'll look at the factors shaping the downtown, tell you how it got
to be this way, and explore what can be done to mitigate the worst of the
problems.

But first, join us for 24 hours in the Red Zone. Paterson, Dickson and
Stone spent from 6 a.m. Friday to 6 a.m. Saturday there last week. This is
what they saw . . .

6 a.m.

Fort Street between Blanshard and Quadra:

The streets are still dark as the first downtown workers arrive for their
Friday shifts. Cars trickle into the city.

A young woman hurries by on her way to somewhere, eyes straight ahead, past
the man wrapped in blankets sleeping in the doorway of North By Northwest
Collectibles.

"Financially challenged traveller," says the sign next to him, near a
grocery cart laden with his belongings.

6:30 a.m., Johnson Street near Wharf:

Restaurant worker Jennifer Gould cleans tables in the outdoor area at
Willie's Bakery, across from the Salvation Army shelter. She likes the
downtown locale and hasn't noticed any problems with the street community.
"They don't bother me," she says.

Nearby store windows are brightly lit and laden with funky clothing and
stereo equipment. Barred windows and gated alleys are becoming commonplace
in some parts of the downtown, but not here.

6:45 a.m., Salvation Army shelter:

Shelter guest Conrad Blake is outside for a cigarette break before
breakfast. The travelling diamond-mine worker says the shelter is "one of
the best places in Canada," and a life-saver in a period when he's waiting
for money to be wired from Ontario.

The shelter's dorm rooms sleep 10, but only four beds in Blake's dorm were
full last night. Anyone under the influence of drugs or alcohol is refused
a bed.

That suits Blake; he's happy for a quiet place to stay.

7 a.m.

Along the waterfront near the Johnson Street Bridge:

The sky is brightening. In the shadows of a boarded-up building, a man
scrambles to gather his bicycle and belongings as we approach.

We ask whether the spot is a good one to escape from prying eyes. "There's
nowhere you can go downtown without getting hassled," he says, walking away.

Picking our way through discarded burger wrappers and soda-pop cups behind
the building, we find used syringes.

7:15 a.m., Bastion Square:

Sidewalk sweeper operator Jeff Kline and his zippy mobile vacuum have been
on the job cleaning downtown streets for three hours now. Kline has noticed
a big jump in the number of people sleeping on the streets, and figures
it's because the B.C. government has cut income assistance. "It's getting
worse," says Kline, one of eight city sweeper operators working this
morning. "It's up 30 to 40 per cent from a couple of years ago -- I'm
seeing anywhere from 10 to 25 people every night."

The homeless don't appreciate Kline's early wakeup call. "We get the
finger. Some are very abusive. They're not happy when I wake them up."

8 a.m., Douglas Street outside Chapters bookstore:

With its all-day crowds of waiting bus travellers still to come, the
downtown's main bus exchange looks grim and inhospitable. Panhandlers
Benoit Hallis, 29, and Alex Moreau, 17, are on the job early, and happily
comparing the balmy, windless morning to the wintery conditions on their
home streets of Montreal. "Being out in minus 40 is the shits," grins
Hallis, who has lived on Victoria streets for nine years.

Except for the young drunk who butted a cigarette on his forehead one night
last week, people are nice in Victoria, says Moreau. There are no
"skinheads" tormenting the homeless. He's upset at police, though, who he
says confiscated his backpack the other day and won't give it back until he
pays $70.

The pair are pondering whether to go to the 9-11 Club for a free breakfast.
"Tomato soup with a chunk of mystery meat," predicts Hallis.

9:20 a.m., Douglas Street outside Blenz Coffee Shop:

"Step into my office," says John Bigeye, bumming a smoke. He's dressed in
standard streetwear: camouflage pants and a hooded grey sweatshirt. The
smell of marijuana wafts by from up the street.

Bigeye ran away from home when he was 16 and is in Victoria "to better my
life."

He makes $20 to $40 a day panhandling. He wants real food this morning,
something with meat in it, but he settles for buying a large paper cup of
hot water for 25 cents at Blenz and adding a pack of dried noodles.
"Fifty-three different organizations in this city that serve free food,"
notes his friend William. "This is the best town in the Northern Hemisphere
for free food and shelter."

10:30 a.m., City Hall:

"Can we make a difference?" Mayor Alan Lowe asks the 60 or so people
gathered to hear the city's plans for tackling problems downtown. "Definitely."

City council, regional health authorities and police outline a strategy
that will see more than $1 million injected into a sobering shelter, more
beds, mobile addiction services and a crackdown on trafficking. "We're
prepared to make it very unpleasant to be a drug trafficker in this city,"
says Victoria police Chief Paul Battershill.

Denyce Burrows, owner of a flower shop alongside the Johnson Street
Parkade, goes head to head with Battershill, demanding he lobby the
judiciary for stiffer sentences for criminals.

He declines, saying it would be "inappropriate." Burrows also wants
mandatory treatment for addicts and forced community service for panhandlers.

12:30 p.m., Pandora Avenue near Quadra:

Lunch time at the Upper Room, which serves about 150 lunches and 250
dinners every day. Manager Dave Stewart is seeing more working poor coming
for a meal these days, unable to make their minimum-wage paycheques and
part-time jobs stretch far enough.

He points to a tiny woman slumped at one of the tables, her face covered in
sores. She nods off every time she tries for a mouthful of food. It's hard
to believe she's just 28.

She was the one caught by the security guard while injecting drugs in the
Johnson Street Parkade a few weeks ago, says Stewart. She ended up with a
brain hemorrhage after the security guard struck her with a flashlight. The
guard said she had brandished a syringe at him.

She doesn't want to talk about it. "I'm OK," she says, heading back to the
street.

1:30 p.m., Pandora Avenue by the Douglas Hotel:

The sounds of construction ring down the block as workers tear out the
little coffee shop at the entrance of the "Dougie." The former Cafe de Lune
is being transformed into a cold beer and wine store.

A pub patron, one of a half-dozen grabbing a cigarette break outside,
expounds enthusiastically on the stupidity of building a liquor outlet on
the most notorious drug corner in the downtown. "I'm going to go into the
brown-paper-bag business and make a fortune," he crows.

Mayor Lowe later says he isn't happy about it, either. But it's the
province that decides such things.

1:55 p.m., Broad Street outside the Victoria Eaton Centre:

The proprietor of the Real Almighty Hereafter Reigns Service, otherwise
known as Yakob, yells at passing shoppers that their "shitty, pissy bodies"
are contaminating the world.

The 55-year-old says he has been living on the streets since the early
1970s, including the past three years in Victoria.

He likes it here. In Ontario and his home province of Manitoba, police
would arrest him at least twice a year and put him in prison or "mental
houses," he says. But it hasn't happened yet since he came to Victoria.

He "eats what other people throw away," sleeps wherever he can, and spends
his waking hours preaching against mainstream religion, which he calls "the
big lie."

He gets beaten up from time to time, but shrugs it off. "I'm just waiting
for somebody to kill my body, because I know I'm not going to die," he
says. "I'm just waiting for when it's going to be over."

2:20 p.m., Prostitutes Empowerment and Education Resource Society, View Street:

It's the end of the work week for PEERS' two outreach workers, who are
getting ready for their nightly patrol of the city's prostitution "strolls."

Outreach worker Melissa Macaulay says the police crackdown on street
prostitution downtown has pushed the stroll down the Gorge Waterway and
into the industrial park below Hillside Avenue and Douglas Street. It
worries her; the less-populated locales leave the sex-trade workers more
vulnerable.

Between 30 and 35 women are working Victoria streets, Macaulay estimates.
That's up from about 20 a year ago, and there are definitely more kids,
aboriginals and older women working the streets than in the past, says
Macaulay.

3:10 p.m.

Starfish Glassworks at the corner of Broad and Yates:

Gary Bolt looks out the window of his glassworks store and sees nothing
alarming. It hasn't always been that way. When the store first opened six
years ago, he got used to seeing daily assaults and drug deals from his
office window. There was even a murder right outside his door.

That changed with the revitalization of Broad Street a couple of years ago.
He still gets panhandlers playing bongos in his doorway on summer evenings,
but says they started cleaning up after themselves when he asked them to.

4 p.m., AIDS Vancouver Island offices, Blanshard and Cormorant:

"Rig dig" time at the needle exchange. The exchange gets back most of the
syringes it gives out (60,000 in December), but not all users follow the
rules. So volunteers and staff hit the streets daily to do what they can,
collecting the most obvious of the syringes, wrappers and condoms that
litter the immediate area.

Outreach worker Kim Toombs pulls on latex gloves and grabs a plastic jar
and a map highlighting the hot spots frequented by users.

As she picks up her first two syringes of the day, a little boy wobbles
past on his two-wheeler; his mother follows with a baby stroller.

Judging by the number of syringes scattered amongst the rest of the
garbage, the filthy yard behind Peterec's Martial Arts Centre on Fisgard
Street seems to be a favourite injection spot. Getting HIV from a discarded
syringe is a risk, but the bigger concern is hepatitis-C, which infects an
estimated 85 per cent of the city's injection-drug users.

5:10 p.m., outside the Douglas Hotel:

Darkness is falling, and the street scene is noticeably changing.

Vehicle and pedestrian traffic has dwindled as downtown shoppers and office
workers head home. Doors are closing and gates are being locked. The supper
crowd has yet to arrive, and parking space on the street is briefly abundant.

Here at "crack corner," the drug deals intensify.

7 p.m., Store Street outside Streetlink shelter:

Purple-haired and wearing a T-shirt adorned with Premier Gordon Campbell's
mug shot, social worker Zoe Friesen seems to be coping with this night's
particular brand of chaos.

Streetlink's 55 beds have been overflowing for at least a month, and
Friesen has had to turn away 20 or 30 people every night. The showers and
laundry room are busy, and there's rarely a time when there isn't
somebody's dog stashed in the storage room.

Everyone wanting a bed has to be checked in by 7:30 p.m., but there will be
a crowd on the steps until at least 11 p.m. hoping for no-shows.

"It's getting worse," says Friesen. "There are more people with problems.
Things are getting more and more desperate. And just wait until all these
people get cut off welfare in another year."

7:30 p.m., inside Streetlink:

He says his name is Deuce. The well-dressed 22-year-old with the big pack
and the four-season tent obviously knows how to take care of himself and
his dog Shasta, who's a fashion statement herself in her $80 Outward Bound
saddle pack.

Newly arrived from Kelowna, the pair camped out the night before. Deuce has
showered at Streetlink and plans to spend the night at an emergency youth
shelter at Christ Church Cathedral.

Street services in Kelowna are really sad, he says. It took him three days
to get enough money for dog food for two days.

In Victoria, he got it five minutes after arriving.

"If I'm going to be homeless, I'm going to be in Victoria. I've never found
anything like this."

7:40 p.m., parking lot near the Pandora Avenue train stop:

There's chili and buns at the Beacon Bus tonight, and the lineup stretches
to the street. Almost 150 people will be served by Salvation Army bus
volunteers tonight. One Friday last month when welfare cheques had run out,
the group served more than twice that many.

8:55 p.m., Pandora Avenue near the Douglas Hotel:

A young HIV-infected heroin addict fresh out of jail for trafficking is
followed down an alley by police. His probation terms prohibit him from
being in the downtown core -- he's "red-zoned" -- but he says he can't stay
away when all the social agencies he needs are in the same area.

Police find a knife and several syringes in his pack, but let him go.

9:15 p.m., Government Street outside Monty's:

There's a full house inside Monty's and a steady stream of young men lining
up to get in.

"Friday night and we're the only strip bar in town," explains the woman at
the door.

The music pounds through the open door to the street, where a panhandler
hustles the bar crowd.

9:25 p.m., Centennial Square:

A passerby under the influence grumbles quietly about the litter in the
square. He says he "got high" and cleaned the whole place up in a manic
moment the day before.

"But it's all back," he says. "I wish they'd stop that. If you're going to
do the dope, clean up after yourself. This is the capital city. Nobody
should have to have their kids see this."

Later, we see him selling drugs to the bar crowd outside Legends nightclub.

9:30 p.m., corner of Government and Pembroke streets:

PEERS outreach worker Melissa Macaulay is working her way down the stroll,
checking up on sex-trade workers and handing out candy. She spots two men
in a van lingering near some of the women, and jots down their licence
plate number. Just in case.

The latest "bad date" sheet Macaulay hands out warns of 15 attacks on
Victoria prostitutes in the last six months. These days, she's seeing more
women who are homeless and "doing more drugs to stay up all night," which
she worries makes them even more vulnerable.

9:45 p.m., same corner:

A prostitute in a long red cape -- Little Red Riding Hood, they call her --
says business is slow tonight. And the johns seem to be drunker these days,
which makes them tougher to deal with.

She doesn't like the latest wrinkle in the trade: doing a "date" at some
guy's house only to find out somewhere down the line that he secretly
videotaped the whole thing and maybe even put it on the Internet.

Two men driving past call out, "Hey, ho!" and then tell us that Red Riding
Hood is HIV-positive and shouldn't be working the streets.

Red, 35, acknowledges that she's infected with HIV. She also has
hepatitis-C, hepatitis-B, and tuberculosis.

11:05 p.m., Christ Church Cathedral:

The kids on the streets have been telling us all day about a panhandler
named Junior who got roughed up by police, and here he is, spending the
night at the emergency youth shelter. His real name is Henry Wesley.

He shows us circular scars that he says are from another time when he was
hit by a taser gun, and a lacerated tongue from the time he bit down hard
during an epileptic seizure after his medication and other belongings were
seized. "I thought the cops were supposed to be the good guys," he says.

Wesley, 20, has been on the streets since his foster parents kicked him out
eight years ago.

12:07 a.m., outside the Open Door:

The big steps of the newly relocated Open Door are rumoured to be a popular
sleeping spot. One man has already bedded down on the steps; as the night
wears on, two more will join him.

12:20 a.m., David Street:

A driver has been pulled over for not using his turn signal, but police
later tell us that the signal was just an excuse. The area is high-risk for
prostitution and break-ins; they spotted the driver circling the block
several times and wanted to "check him out."

If a guy is just looking for company, no problem, says one of the officers.
Prostitution isn't illegal, just solicitation.

"But if you see girls working down here," the officer adds, "you know
they're hard up."

1:20 a.m., outside Legends, Douglas Street:

The sidewalk is packed with drunk young people having a cigarette, the
girls shivering in their skimpy clubwear. Panhandlers work the crowd.

An older man, clearly down on his luck, lurches up with a handful of
flowers for us. "For the ladies," he says. "If you've got no change, that's
OK. I just ripped them off from outside a building."

2:10 a.m.

Johnson Street Parkade:

Whatever might go on in the parkade in the daytime, there's no sign of
anyone at this time of night. The parkade is deserted. As we make our way
back out, we spot a woman walking her dog on the second level.

2:21 a.m., Government Street at Pandora:

A fight breaks out among two young men who only moments before were
strangers passing each other on the street. Police arrive minutes later and
break it up, throwing one into the police van while the other waits outside.

No one has been hurt. Police decide to just drop off the aggressor at his
friend's car a few blocks away and leave it at that.

2:40 a.m., outside the Boom Boom Room on Wharf Street:

A young man lies unconscious on the stairwell as ambulance crews ready a
spine board and cervical collar. He has been badly beaten, but his
attackers are nowhere in sight.

Another man, dazed and bleeding, says he tried to break up the fight and
ended up being punched in the mouth and pushed down the stairs. "My wife is
going to kill me," he groans.

Friends of the beaten man pace the sidewalk and grumble into their
cellphones about getting even. We later come across a carload of them on
Government Street, looking for the attackers.

2:50 a.m., Fort Street outside Villeroy and Boch:

The driver of a pickup truck waits anxiously to see what police are going
to do about the two roadside breathalyser tests he just took.

Asked to lock up his truck while police run his licence plate, he angrily
slams the door shut.

But it's his lucky night: No impaired-driving charge. He gets a 24-hour
roadside suspension.

3:21 a.m., Gorge and Rock Bay:

A young sex trade worker walks the industrial stroll, alone on the empty
street.

3:25 a.m., everywhere downtown:

The bar crowd is gone and the street community is visible again. Hanging
around outside the 7-Eleven at Douglas and Johnson is the activity of
choice at this hour, but a few people doze in bus stops and in dark corners.

One intoxicated man passes out in a crouch position beside the wheel of a
parked car, risking a fall sideways into traffic. A tow-truck driver stops
to pull him onto the sidewalk.

4:30 a.m., Douglas Street at Fisgard:

A weary sex-trade worker heads home. At the empty QV's 24-hour restaurant
in Chinatown, staff seize the quiet moment to scrub the floors.

4:40 a.m., Douglas Street at Broughton:

A pack of young people appear from nowhere, carrying large objects over
their shoulders. Troublemakers? No, snowboarders, hurrying to catch the
first bus up-Island.

4:50 a.m., Yates Street below Blanshard:

Pounding music from Maynard Court has us looking for an after-hours club.
But it's just a raucous house party in an apartment above one of the stores.

City cleanup crews will have their work cut out for them in this part of
town. Crumpled beer cans and broken bottles cover the ground in the
throughway between Pandora Avenue and Johnson Street.

5 a.m., Pembroke Street:

Little Red Riding Hood is still working, having taken a few hours off to
hang out at a friend's house.

It's late, but she's hoping for some customers among the men who finish
work around 2 and 3 a.m.

Earlier, she thought she had a "date" all lined up as she was leaving the
house party.

"But some girl snuck off with him."

5:35 a.m., Douglas and Johnson:

The street sweepers are back on the job, tackling the pile of pizza plates
on the sidewalk.

Farther up the street, the first wave of bakers and coffee barristas make
their way into work. It's Saturday, and the shoppers will be arriving soon.