DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE NEEDS A STRONG LEADER TO SAVE IT

It's great to watch some things take wing. With luck, the call for a
Downtown Eastside recovery czar will do more than flutter about at
sidewalk level.

Police have tried everything from clamping down on drugs to working
with addicts as victims of disease.

It all comes with a cost. Ignore drug use and the streets become
hellish, with addicts crawling and flailing everywhere. Get tough
with extra enforcement and the cost merely shifts. Socially conscious
types declare police to be hating the poor, hating the mentally ill,
the addicted.

Law-enforcement job descriptions include fielding anger, and we do
the work regardless. Of course, wherever resources are drawn from
suffers a staffing loss. The Downtown Eastside is part of a policing
district that includes a quarter of the city.

While there is a Beat Enforcement Team assigned to the heart of
darkness, there is more there than they can handle. More than a
triple contingent of police could handle. A purely financial analysis
would show complete abandonment of the area as a better bet.

Skid-row officers could move to keep the rest of the city safe, while
addicts and gangsters were left to torment each other. Yet no one I
know would endorse such a thing. People suffering addiction and/or
mental illness deserve humane treatment.

If a Downtown Eastside strategy committee were led by someone with
actual power, we might be able to provide it. Resource groups could
be audited, held accountable for how funding is used. Everyone could
be put in the same canoe and made to paddle together.

Those set on steering for the waterfall could be invited to watch
from the shore. There will always be a group intent on destruction,
and a leader or czar would have to show real strength to be effective.

Some interesting names come up in discussion. Kash Heed, the recently
retired West Van police chief, would most certainly have the strength
to steer through DTES wreckage. I knew him for years at the VPD, and
timid he is not.

Carole Taylor has experience as an MLA, as an alderman, in media and
in business. She's held in high enough esteem that committee members
might agree to paddle in cadence.

I'm told Dianne Watts is too enmeshed in Surrey developments to break
free. And while ex-mayor Larry Campbell would know players by name,
we haven't heard much from him lately.

David Eby from the Pivot Legal Society is a compelling character, for
all his group's railing against police. Even deposed marijuana czar
Marc Emery might make a go of it, if he could wrap his mind around
getting people clean instead of smoking pot.

Yes, I know. If we had everyone in the Downtown Eastside smoking weed
instead of crack, we wouldn't be in the jackpot we're in. I'm making
a different point.

Give us a leader, I say. Someone with some stones, regardless of
where they're stored. Having everyone paddle together is a good
thing, regardless of direction. We can sort it out once we're moving.

So far, getting together to splash in the shallows has achieved nothing.

Project "Lockstep" may be viewed at www.vpd.ca. Sgt. Mark Tonner is a
Vancouver police officer. His opinions aren't necessarily those of
the city's police department or board. Mark may be contacted at
marcuspt@shaw.ca.