OLYMPIC BID WON'T AFFECT DRUG USERS, CITY'S CHIEF SAYS

No Heavy-Handedness Will Be Used To Impress IOC

Vancouver's new chief of police offered assurances Friday he would not
support heavy-handed law enforcement to sweep drug users out of the
Downtown Eastside to impress Olympic officials.

"No, I don't anticipate that at all," Jamie Graham said in a
question-and-answer session from a generally appreciative crowd at a
Downtown Eastside Residents Association meeting.

Graham made the comment in response to questions from Irwin Oostindie,
senior organizer with Community Directions, a group of residents and local
businesses in the Downtown Eastside and Strathcona.

Oostindie said he was concerned police would be called on to be tough with
drug addicts to prevent their presence from influencing members of the
International Olympic Committee deciding which city should be host of the
2010 Winter Games.

Oostindie said it would be a mistake to attempt to use policing to deal
with what he characterized as a health-care crisis in the Downtown
Eastside, despite the open-air drug market that plagues the Hastings and
Main street areas.

He said people are worried the four-pillar approach of enforcement, harm
reduction, prevention and treatment would be swept aside in the zeal to
attract the Olympics.

Graham repeated on a number of occasions he supports the four-pillar
approach, but said as the chief of police, public safety was his priority
in the troubled community.

"The focus of the police has to be to create an envelope of safety," he said.

Kim Kerr of DERA explained how the drug-riddled neighbourhood was becoming
unsafe for law-abiding residents, who constitute the majority of the
population.

He stressed the problem of drug dealers needed to be dealt with, but not by
going after the drug addicts.

"We recognize that people who are drug-addicted need help. We do not see
them as the enemy," Kerr said.

DERA organizers presented Graham with a 600-name petition requesting he
"take steps to eradicate this open-air drug market operating in this
neighbourhood."

Although Graham appeared to impress many of the residents with his
appearance and desire to listen to their problems, he emphasized he was not
there to provide simple answers to a complex problem.

He described himself as the junior member of the Vancouver police force in
time on the job. When he was asked about how he expected to halt the
persistent influx of heroin into the port city he responded: "I cannot
promise you solutions right now."

However, he said if the problems in the neighbourhood had not improved by
the end of his five-year term as chief, he would consider his term a failure.