NEEDLE CLEANUP CREW WANTED

The people who pass them out should pick them up, says police chief

Victoria police Chief Paul Battershill wants the downtown needle
exchange to develop a volunteer program to recover the needles it
gives to addicts.

"If they're putting needles out, I think they should also be sending
someone out in a staff position to clean up the needles," Battershill
said Tuesday at his weekly press conference. "I don't see that as a
police responsibility."

That's one of the things he'll be bringing up at a meeting today with
Mayor Alan Lowe and Vancouver Island Health Authority chief executive
officer Rick Roger, as they look at addiction issues such as housing, drug
treatment, intervention and funding for a treatment centre in the downtown
core.

The meeting comes after recent public scrutiny of the city-operated
Johnson Street parkade, which has become home to drug addicts,
prostitutes and petty criminals.

Dealing with the problem is complex.

The city has moved to secure the parkade and make it less comfortable
as a hangout, but council fears shuffling the problems out of there will
just chase them to another area.

"If we do not deal with the root of the problem ... we will continue to
run around putting out fires," Lowe said.

Lowe sees the meeting as a first step in dealing with the health
authority, which holds the purse strings in dealing with these social
problems, he said.

"I guess what we are hoping to do is open an dialogue with the health
authority," he said. "It's more of a health issue than an enforcement issue."

Used syringes left in the open are one of the things people complain of.

Battershill said the needle exchange has a responsibility to recover
the needles, and said he'll "push hard" for an active program where
staff cleans up the needles it hands out.

No one from the needle exchange program was available to comment Tuesday.

Needle recovery programs called 'rig digs' have been very effective in
Calgary, said Battershill. The city also has needle collection
machines. If an addict puts an old needle in, he gets a new one.

There is some 'rig digging' going on in Victoria, said the chief.

"But obviously there isn't enough because there are needles all over the
place."

Battershill also swung back at critics who said the police force has done
nothing about drug activity and disorder in the downtown core.

The statistics -- which Battershill had pulled after the complaints -- show
that between Jan. 1 and Jan. 10, there were 89 people arrested in the
downtown core.

Twenty-nine people were arrested for possession, 13 for trafficking,
four for possession of a drug for the purpose of trafficking, 17 for
breach of court order, eight for being drunk in a public place, two
for assault and two for obstruction. Fourteen people were also
arrested on outstanding warrants.

Battershill emphasized enforcement is only about 10 to 20 per cent of the
overall drug problem.

"The other 80 per cent we need to get going on are things like health
care, referral, prevention and to get some sort of treatment centre
going," he said. "It doesn't exist right now and we need it."

Although there has been a stable population of 1,500 to 2,000
intravenous drug addicts in the Greater Victoria area, what has
changed is the more open activity of addicts shooting up in public, said
Battershill.

Still, Battershill said it's absolutely nothing like Vancouver's
Downtown East Side, which some likened Victoria to last week.

One of the biggest challenges for the new amalgamated
Victoria-Esquimalt police force will be dealing with open activity in the
downtown core.

"We'll be cracking down on that. We are cracking down on that,"
Battershill said.

But cracking down without providing the support addicts need will only
displace them to other areas of the city, said the chief. Addicts fled
Holiday Court on Hillside Avenue for Fernwood. When police started
cracking down on that neighbourhood, some addicts made their way to
the Burnside-Gorge area. Battershill predicts crime will migrate west
beyond Vic West and Esquimalt.

Social problems are growing with the city, said Lowe.

And Victoria has unique characteristics to its downtown social
problems compared to other Canadian cities, the mayor said.

"There is no other city that I know of in the province that has a core our
size."

Capital region residents come downtown not only to shop, eat and
socialize, but to buy drugs, turn tricks and hang out in areas such as the
Johnson Street parkade, he said.

Downtown services are supported by 72,000 residents but are used by some
325,000 others in the region, he said.

Comparing Victoria to Kamloops, which has a similar-sized population,
Lowe said the Interior city's downtown core is a fraction of the size of
his municipality.

Victoria attracts more transients than Kamloops or cities on the
Prairies or eastern and central Canada because of its mild spring and
winter, he said.