POLICE, HEALTH CHIEFS MEET LOWE TO SWAP PARKADE CLEANUP IDEAS

Three top community figures put their heads together Wednesday to address
growing concerns with drug addiction and social problems in downtown Victoria.

Victoria police Chief Paul Battershill and Vancouver Island Health
Authority chief executive officer Rick Roger met with Victoria Mayor Alan
Lowe at City Hall for about 90 minutes to ponder downtown issues including
complaints about drug-related activity in the city-operated Johnson Street
parkade.

Lowe said specific announcements will be made at a City Hall press
conference on Jan. 31.

"At that time I hope to have a direction in which we will be going, and to
try to look at solutions to the problem. Obviously there are some immediate
issues we want to look at -- picking up needles, looking at continued
enforcement and possible discussion of where and how we could create a
'sobering' centre so that we could help some of those people in need."

Greater Victoria has about 1,500 to 2,000 intravenous drug users.

Roger said VIHA is very interested in inner-city health care, both in
Victoria and Nanaimo, and is eager to "muster our forces" to deal with the
various issues that have been identified. He said the rare meeting of a
leading civic official, chief of police and health executive to deal with a
single topic was a valuable exercise.

"There is no way that any one of those three parties could proceed on their
own. This is a matter of developing a unified sense of what will work, and
then trying to get everyone coalesced around the same objective."

Roger said he discovered how effective such a co-operative approach was
when he worked on a similar initiative while serving in a high-level
position as a health executive in Vancouver. He said there is more to
addressing downtown problems than having additional funding.

"It would be useful to have more to invest in some of these issues, but
we're mindful of the times we work in and we will redirect what we can to
respond."

Agencies such as the Victoria Cool Aid Society, which operates the downtown
Swift Street Community Health Centre, need to be consulted in reaching
solutions, he said.

For Battershill, the will to examine the issues at hand from a number of
angles is a good sign coming from the meeting.

"We looked at environmental issues, we looked at enforcement, we looked at
access to health care. We've set short timelines, and everybody is very
focused on trying to get things accomplished and also keep our eye on the
longer-term vision."