POLICE TAKE AIM AT OPEN DRUG SALES

Nine Officers Join The Drug Squad, Which Also Takes Responsibility For The
Grow Busters

Vancouver city police will add nine officers to its drug squad to tackle
open-air cocaine and heroin trafficking in Vancouver, Inspector Kash Heed
confirmed Monday.

Heed, who commands the vice and drug squad, will also assume responsibility
for the department's Grow Busters team, which raids marijuana-growing
operations.

The drug squad will expand from 16 to 31 officers with the new additions.

Heed said the nine officers slated to target open-air drug markets were
previously assigned to the patrol division. The officers did have
responsibility for drug enforcement at one time, but had been given
additional assignments over the years.

Heed said pooling all the officers into one squad will permit a more
coordinated strategy.

"We're starting to get some success here, slowly but surely, and,
hopefully, we can turn it around," he said.

"The additional resources are needed. It was something that I had been
fighting for since the day I sat down on this chair."

"The drug squad recently finished Project Spirit, which resulted in 26
arrests and 37 charges. Heed said his officers have made a total of 209
arrests since June, when the squad began attacking the open-air drug
markets, particularly on the Downtown Eastside.

He noted that some of the traffickers from the first project in June are
still in jail. "So people continually say,'We don't get support from the
courts.' Well, if we've got traffickers still in jail from our project in
June, I view that as successful."

Heed said police also try to get bail conditions that require alleged
traffickers to stay out of certain neighbourhoods.

"Again, this is the first phase of a series of projects slated to deal with
our problems," Heed said.

"Are we making a difference? My intelligence reports and what I get from
my members - [show] it's beginning to get a bit more difficult to purchase
drugs in that area. However, we have to be innovative in our strategies to
go after these traffickers."

Heed said he also continues to meet with the RCMP, which has the federal
mandate to deal with drug issues in the city of Vancouver. And he's also
working with police in other municipalities to develop a wide-ranging
strategy for dealing with the problem, he said.

"We have to remember this is not just a problem specific to Vancouver," he
said. "When we do put pressure on the drug traffickers here in Vancouver,
we know that they are going to disperse to areas with similar characteristics."

As for the problems with marijuana-growing operations, Heed said bringing
Grow Busters under his command will allow the unit to focus more resources
on the problem.

"There'll be more people working on it," he said. "We'll work on it from
the community aspect, and we'll also work on it from the organized crime
aspect."

A recent report on workload changes in the Vancouver police department
noted that the dramatic rise in marijuana-growing operations in the city in
recent years has been a "huge drain" on police resources. "The rapid
increase in grow-ops has resulted in the drug squad having to decrease
enforcement in other areas, and has also generated overtime at a rate among
the highest in the police department because the drug squad resources have
not been increased to match the workload," stated the report, which
examined the department's workload changes from 1993 to 2000.

The Vancouver Sun obtained a copy of the report under B.C.'s Freedom of
Information and Protection of Privacy Act.