POLICE CHIEF WANTS LONGER SENTENCES FOR REPEAT OFFENDERS

Police Chief Jim Chu wants to make Vancouver the safest major city in
Canada, but he will not guarantee he can alleviate the city's drug
problem by the time his five-year contract expires in 2012.

Chu said the justice system, social service agencies, health
providers and politicians all have their part to play in eliminating
the city's open air drug market, which continues to flourish in the
Downtown Eastside. "I don't have the ultimate power to control every
aspect of the economy or the community or the courts or the laws,"
Chu told the Courier. "I can only do my part as police chief, and I
think a lot of people recognize it's not just the police that are
responsible for keeping this city safe."

Over the years, various city police officers have expressed their
concerns to the Courier over the open air drug market, which they
call an embarrassment for residents and a shock to tourists and
visiting police officers. To combat the drug trade, police have
initiated several crackdowns on street-level drug dealers, seized
millions of dollars of drugs and forced the closures of drug-infested
hotels and businesses. In 2002, then-mayor of the city, Larry
Campbell, said in his inauguration speech that "if we do our work
well, we should be able to eliminate the open drug market on the
Downtown Eastside by the next election."

That election was in November 2005. One month before the election,
the Courier interviewed 30 people who lived or worked in the Downtown
Eastside. Twenty-eight of the respondents were emphatic that the
visible selling and using of drugs continued in the community. The
facts are not lost on Chu, who became chief in August after Jamie
Graham retired. "Who else can claim the main hub of drug trafficking
is half a block from the police station at 312 Main?" he said from
his seventh-floor office, which overlooks the Cambie Bridge and downtown.

Chu's plan to put a dent in the city's drug problem concentrates on
the city's chronic offenders, about 90 per cent of whom have
addiction problems and commit property crime to feed their habits. Of
the 370 chronic offenders tracked by the Vancouver Police
Department's chronic offenders unit, none served more than two
consecutive years in prison in the last four years.Chu notes the
maximum sentence for a burglary to a house is life in prison. He
added that he has seen criminals sentenced to more than two years in
prison in other provinces, but he has not witnessed the same
sentencing in British Columbia.

So what's the solution?

"Justice Minister [Robert] Nicholson has lots of legal experts," said
Chu, who wrote a letter to the federal minister last week. "I'm
outlining the problem for him, I'm conveying the sentiments of people
in the city fed up with the chronic offenders and he can figure out
what the answer is. My suggestion to him--the answer is--to give the
judge a tool."

That "tool" is the ability for judges to impose longer sentences,
area restrictions and programs for addicted drug dealers.