DRUG PROBLEM FUELS MOST OF CITY'S CRIME

The 'four-per-centers': our real crime problem

Vancouver's drug problem fuels most of the city's crime.

Here, victims of a career criminal tell of the heavy toll.

Ask someone to remember the moment when they became a victim of crime, and
they will recall it in almost photographic detail.

Alice Morris remembers returning home one evening to find the dresser
drawers in her bedroom strewn across the floor.

Sam Glendinning remembers picking up a two-by-four and walking slowly into
his house after noticing the back door was open.

And Henry Do remembers getting a call at 4 a.m. from his alarm company
telling him his Hastings Street cafe had been broken into for the sixth
time in the five years he's owned it.

Like so many victims of crime in Vancouver, they remember a feeling of
violation -- a strange mix of anger and fear that has stayed with them ever
since.

Ask a criminal to remember his crimes, however, and you'll get a much
different response.

"I can't even begin to remember them all," John William Bryce said when
asked by The Vancouver Sun to recall details of his offences.

Bryce, a heroin addict, has been convicted of more than a dozen break-ins
from here to Winnipeg in the past 25 years. By his own reckoning, he's
gotten away with "hundreds" more.

It was Bryce, 43, who smashed the basement window of Alice Morris's home
and hocked her jewellery for drug money. It was he who stole an expensive
laptop computer and camera from Sam Glendinning's east Vancouver house. And
it was he who smashed open the picture window at Henry Do's cafe, grabbing
a fistful of chocolate bars along with the cafe's VCR.

Vancouver police have been saying for years that the city's biggest crime
problem is a group they dub the "four-per-centers" -- a small minority of
all offenders who commit the majority of crimes.

The group, most of them drug addicts, number no more than a few
hundred. But it is their persistent law-breaking the police blame for
Vancouver's high crime rate. It is also the reason, they say, crime in
Vancouver has declined much slower during the 1990s than in other Canadian
cities.

This is the story of one of those repeat offenders -- and the victims he
left behind.

"THIS IS MY HOME"

Alice Morris' home in east Vancouver is full of 44 years of good memories.

Her husband Peter, a carpenter, built the house in the 1950s after they had
been married 11 years. She is now 79.

It is where she raised her children -- three daughters and one son.

It's where her five-year-old grandson comes to play.

"I'll never move," she says. "This is my house."

But since Feb. 11, 1997, her home has carried bad memories, too.

When she goes to her bedroom now, she remembers the evening she returned
home to find furniture overturned and her best jewelry missing.

She remembers those first few nights after the break-in, lying awake in bed
wondering if it would happen again.

Morris is an energetic woman. Standing less than five feet tall, she
cheerfully tells a visiting reporter about her break-in.

Raised in a more polite generation, she can't help but mention that --
aside from her ransacked bedroom -- the burglars "were very neat, I have to
say."

And while she always looks through her peephole when someone comes calling
and has put a few more bolts on the doors, she insists she's not scared
enough to consider moving.

Her son worries for her.

Peter Jr., 54, a school teacher in Hope, tries to visit his mother as often
as he can. The excuse might be that the window sills need repainting or a
door hinge needs fixing.

But mainly he just wants to make sure she's safe.

He would like to see his mother move into a nursing home, a place where she
would be looked after during the times that he can't be around.

"But this is home for her," he said. "So she feels safe here."

SKYTRAIN MAKES IT EASY

Asked why he targeted the Morris' home, Bryce's answer is simple: it was
only a few blocks from a SkyTrain station.

Most of the "fences" who can turn goods into cash, and the dealers who turn
cash into dope, hang out in the downtown core, Bryce said.

Sometimes he will team up with someone who steals cars, which allows him to
break in to homes on the city's west side. But, in most cases, he's limited
to houses and stores near downtown -- or those he can reach on SkyTrain.

"If I'm not in a vehicle, most of the B&Es I will do are located near the
SkyTrain -- so it's one SkyTrain ride downtown," he said. "From the time I
do the B&E, get downtown and score -- it's within half an hour."

"I've been broken into four times," recalls Henry Do, owner of Uncle
Henry's Cafe on East Hastings. "No, five times," he corrects himself. "Six
times. ... Six or seven times."

Do remembers the most recent break-in clearly. It was Jan. 2, 1999, and he
was wakened at 4 a.m. by his alarm company.

He remembers rushing downtown, getting to the cafe before the police. His
big front window was smashed open. The VCR he had in the cafe for customers
was missing, as were some CDs and an assortment of packaged foods --
cheese, chocolate bars and candy.

It cost him $1,000 to replace the window.

Do, 37, came to Vancouver from Hong Kong 10 years ago. He always wanted to
open his own business -- but the rent on Hastings was all he could afford
with the little cash he had.

"I come here and work every day," Do said. "I have no holidays, no weekends."

He has tried to improve the security at his place -- buying new, stronger
locks. But he eventually decided it was easier to give in -- to try to keep
anything worth stealing out of his cafe. So he didn't bother to replace the
TV and VCR that were so popular with his customers. He doesn't want them
stolen again.

DEEP DEPRESSION

Bryce still remembers the store's loud alarm hurting his ears as he stood
hunched over the cash register in Do's cafe.

No matter what he tried, he couldn't unlock it. Finally, after about a
minute of trying, he decided to just grab the whole thing.

"I ended up smashing it on the road, taking the money and leaving it in the
middle of Hastings Street," he remembers.

While he remembers the break-in, what is more clear in his mind was what
happened a few days earlier.

On Dec. 21, 1998, his best friend, Tom, died of heroin withdrawal in his
arms. The two of them had committed several B&Es together, and were under
bail conditions not to be in each other's company.

But unlike Bryce's many other occasional accomplices, Tom was a friend.

"We were very close," Bryce said. "He was like a brother to me. Best friend
I've had in my life."

Tom's death plunged Bryce into a deep depression. After New Year's, he was
desperate for drugs. He and Tom would sometimes hang out at Uncle Henry's
cafe. He knew about the VCR there, the CDs, the TV.

"I knew I could go there and get some money," Bryce said.

If you knock on the door of the Glendinning home, don't be surprised if it
takes a few minutes before they open it -- they've first got to release
about half a dozen bolts and locks.

Since their house was broken into on Oct. 10, 1997, Sam and Bonnie
Glendinning have renovated much of their house, at some expense, with one
goal in mind: keeping out the bad guys.

If the courts won't keep repeat offenders like the one that broke into
their house locked up, the Glendinnings figure they'll do their best to
lock the rest of the world out.

Sam installed a steel door at the back of their house. And he placed steel
bars over the basement window where the thieves got in. But his pride and
joy is the front door.

There, in addition to a deadbolt, he has installed four "mortise bolts"
along the door frame -- tiny sliding bolts that make the door incredibly
sturdy and secure.

He challenges a visiting reporter, only half jokingly, to try and kick it down.

The couple has also become more suspicious of people in their east
Vancouver neighbourhood. "If I see someone walking down the street that
doesn't belong here, I have no problem calling 911," Sam said.

But while they put on a brave face, both concede the break-in left them
deeply troubled.

"I felt totally and utterly violated," says Bonnie. "Just a sensation that
someone had intruded on your privacy -- it's just very unpleasant."

When Sam discovered the break-in, he noticed his glass penny jar, the one
he always kept by the TV, was sitting slightly aside -- as if someone had
moved it.

When the police came, they dusted the jar for fingerprints.

They got a match: John William Bryce.

ALWAYS PLEADS GUILTY

It is, at times, hard to believe that Bryce could really be the source of
so much fear and havoc in this city.

He is, by his own account, "not a big guy." He shuffles into the visitors
room at Mt. Thurston Correctional Centre near Chilliwack, his long dark
hair hanging over his face.

He stands only 165 cm (five feet, six inches) and while he now weighs 82 kg
(180 pounds), he was only 59 kg (130 pounds) when he was arrested in early
June. He speaks in a soft, deliberate tone.

And he isn't very cunning.

Despite the numerous times he's been linked to a crime scene by his
fingerprints, he keeps forgetting to put on a pair of gloves.

"These things aren't planned," he tries to explain.

When police come knocking at his hotel door now, he lets them in and
politely surrenders.

"Years ago I tried to get away from them," he said. "Now I don't bother. I
say, 'You got me.' "

And once he gets before a judge, he almost always pleads guilty.

"If I did it, I'm going to own up to what I've done," he said.

In a series of recent interviews with The Vancouver Sun, Bryce spoke
candidly about his criminal career. He professed his innocence only once --
saying he had nothing to do with a taxi cab robbery he was convicted of in
Calgary.

Indeed, he said, the dozen break-ins on his criminal record are not a true
reflection of the scope of his criminal activity.

"I've done hundreds of them," he said. "There was one point I was doing two
or three a night. And that went on for months and months."

Yet he insists he feels guilt over each crime.

"I don't like doing house B&Es. I hate doing them. I don't like hurting
people," Bryce said. "But I just feel this overpowering urge to get better."

That overpowering urge is heroin withdrawal, what Bryce describes as being
"dope sick."

"It's like the worst flu you can imagine," he explains. "It's like having
every bone in your body crying out at you, 'Help me. Help me.' "

If he goes too long without heroin, Bryce said, he begins to sweat
profusely, vomit and lose control of his bowels.

"It's not a fun feeling," he said.

He still remembers the first time he used heroin.

He was 15, serving a nine-month sentence at an adult jail in B.C. for a
series of break-ins.

One night, he was recruited as the lookout while a group of adult prisoners
in his cell got high.

"They said: 'Go ahead, try it. It's good.' And they were right," Bryce
said. "I liked it so much I never stopped."

He left prison a heroin addict and within 20 days of his release he was
sent back to jail, convicted of eight more break-ins. His life has followed
much the same pattern ever since: committing crimes to get high, being
arrested, going to jail, getting released and doing it all over again.

The justice system doesn't seem to know what to do with him. Even with his
lengthy record, judges have given him only 30 days in jail for a break-in
as recently as 1996.

In the last few years, he's been getting tougher sentences. He got five
months for breaking into Uncle Henry's cafe, six months for the Morris
break-in and a year for breaking into the Glendinning home. But no matter
what the penalty, Bryce returns to his same patterns when he gets out.

"Jail doesn't scare me," said Bryce, who estimates he's spent 15 to 20
years of his life in some type of state custody.

In February, Bryce was given a conditional sentence for possessing stolen
property. But that sentence converted into a jail sentence in June after he
was convicted of two more B&Es and an auto theft.

B.C. provincial court Chief Judge Carol Baird Ellan said offenders like
Bryce are common in courtrooms across the Lower Mainland.

While the maximum penalty for break-ins is life in prison, Baird Ellan said
judges are restricted in the sentences they can hand out. They are bound by
the sentencing principles laid out by higher courts and, since 1996,
Criminal Code provisions requiring them to consider "all available
sanctions other than imprisonment."

Since June 21 of this year, Bryce has been at the Mount Thurston
Correctional Centre, a minimum-security provincial jail about a 20 minute
drive from Chilliwack.

A series of six cabins, holding about 10 prisoners each, is nestled between
lush, tree-covered mountains. The Chilliwack River rages behind the complex
and inmates can spend some of their free time fishing. Since he arrived,
Bryce said he's caught a couple of good-sized salmon.

Unable to get any heroin at Thurston, a facility he describes as "the
driest jail I've ever been in," Bryce has been clean for the past few
months, he said.

"I'm feeling good," he said. "I'm clean. I'm healthy."

However, there is a downside to being off drugs. When he's high, or looking
to get high, he forgets about his past.

"But when I'm straight, I think about it," he said. "I realize I've done
some pretty shitty things."

"CRIME IS ALL I KNOW"

When he's out of jail, Bryce gets $525 a month in welfare. With rent at an
Eastside hotel running about $325, that leaves about $200 left. It would be
hard enough to make that stretch for food and essentials, but with a heroin
habit that, at its peak, costs Bryce about $200 to $300 a day -- he has, to
put it mildly, a serious cash flow problem.

His answer is a steady diet of crime -- stealing from cars, breaking into
stores and burgling homes. And converting stolen goods into cash is easy,
he said.

He said there are dozens of known "fences" with houses near downtown who
will buy almost anything. Even some of the pawn shops, which are supposed
to be strictly regulated, will buy stolen goods under the table, Bryce said.

Fences usually pay about one-tenth to one-third the value of an item, he
said. He can usually sell a $1,000 stereo for $200 to $300. If he's got
something still in its box from a store, he'll get as much as half the value.

Sometimes, fences will even "tell me what they want and I'll go out and get
it," he said.

Occasionally, if he's got something a dealer wants, he can barter directly
for dope. "Gold is a big seller," he said. "The drug dealers always want gold."

Bryce talks about his routine of crime and drugs the way others would talk
about work, as if it was normal.

"Jail and crime is all I know," he said. "This is the only life I've known,
except for when I was a kid -- but I can hardly even remember that."

STOLE FROM SISTER

Bryce was born Nov. 8, 1957 at a British military base in Korbach, West
Germany. When he was just a baby, his family moved to Vancouver, where his
parents raised him and his three sisters, he said.

His mother died when he was just 11-years-old. After his mother's death,
his father became violent, he said, and as the lone boy, he got the
harshest beatings. (Bryce said his father died a few years ago. He didn't
attend the funeral.)

By the time he was 14, Bryce and his sisters were all separated and put in
foster homes. He was a troublemaker from the start, skipping school
regularly. When he was sent to a reformatory, he kept running away.

"And then, while I'd be away, I'd steal something, or break into a car," he
said.

He was sent to jail for the first time when he was 15.

"From there it just escalated," Bryce said. "I got a heroin habit in jail
and things just went a little bit nuts."

But Bryce knows his upbringing can't excuse his behaviour.

His three sisters had things just as tough, and they've all led law-abiding
lives. He even stayed in touch with his older sister in Vancouver,
Patricia, until a couple of years ago when -- dope sick again -- he broke
into her house.

He still remembers talking to her on the phone after it happened.

"I had my house broken into," she said.

"I know," he replied, too stoned to realize what he was saying.

"You broke into my house."

"Yeah, I did," he confessed. She hung up and they haven't spoken much since
then.

In 1994, Bryce tested positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. He
thinks he got the virus from a dirty needle.

"I've had this for five or six years now, and I'm not getting any
healthier," he said.

At heart, Bryce says, he knows he has chosen the life he leads.

"I tried to live the straight life, but I wasn't happy," he said. "It's
just not my cup of tea."

But after being a burden on his family, the public and the justice system
for decades, he has finally become exhausted with his own shallow life of
drugs and crime.

"I'll kind of be glad when it's all over with," he said. "I get really
tired being in and out of jail all the time."

cskelton@pacpress.southam.ca

HOW WE DID IT

When The Vancouver Sun decided to compare the drop in crime rates in North
American cities, the first decision that had to be made was what crimes to
look at.

Using over-all crime rates -- the total number of offences in a given year
- -- is notoriously unreliable, because those numbers can dip or spike
depending on a lot of factors that have nothing to do with how safe a city is.

The most reliable crime indicator of all is homicides -- for the simple
fact that virtually all homicides come to the attention of the police.

But while homicides are a solid indicator in the U.S., they are so rare in
Canada -- especially in smaller cities -- they are not very useful.

For example, from 1992 to 1993 the homicide rate in West Vancouver tripled
- -- from one to three. (It was back down to zero in 1994.)

That left two crimes that criminologists said are common enough to be
useful and reported enough to be reliable: robberies and break-ins
(classified as burglaries in the U.S.)

The next decision was to choose a span of time. The year 1991 was chosen as
the beginning, because that is the year when -- after three decades of
steady crime increases -- the crime rate in both the U.S. and Canada began
to drop dramatically. The year 1998 was chosen as the end, because it was
the most recent year for which detailed statistics were available for all
cities. Crime statistics for 1999 were released a few months ago in Canada,
but they will not be available in the U.S. until this fall.

The Sun then calculated the crime rate declines in different cities based
on raw data obtained from a number of sources.

Data for Canadian cities was obtained from the Canadian Centre for Justice
Statistics, a division of Statistics Canada. U.S. data was obtained from
annual statistics produced by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And
statistics for Lower Mainland municipalities other than Vancouver were
provided by the police services division of the attorney-general's office.