SISTER WATCH LAUNCHED TO BATTLE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

Vancouver's Mayor Gregor Robertson and Police Chief Jim Chu announced
Monday the launch of the Sister Watch program, designed to make the
Downtown Eastside safer for women.

The program, which replaces the Guardian Project, has five major
components: a tip line, a website, town-hall meetings, a speakers'
bureau, and a reward of up to $10,000 for information about the sudden
death of Ashley Machiskinic, who fell from the window of the Regent
Hotel at 160 E. Hastings on Sept. 15.

The announcement, made from the corner of Main and Hastings streets,
came on the National Day of Remembrance for Action to end violence
against women, which memorializes the fourteen women killed at
Montreal's L'Ecole Polytechnique in 1989.

The program will be advertised on large signs at 18 bus shelters in
the Downtown Eastside, advising women to call the tip line, at
604-215-4777, if they are in trouble, afraid or in danger.

A large electronic sign that can be moved around the neighbourhood
will be deployed. And business cards with the tip-line number will be
handed out to women by police officers and staff of social-service
agencies.

The signs and advertising space, provided by CBS Outdoor Canada, will
be in place until April next year.

Chu said the program was renamed Sister Watch so it would fit in with
other crime-prevention programs, such as Bar and Restaurant Watch and
Block Watch.

Chu said police were targeting "predatory and violent drug dealers"
who were responsible for attacks against women.

"The levels of violence against women in this community must not be
tolerated. We must work together to reduce [them]," he said.

Chu said there was still a $10,000 reward for information concerning
the death of Machiskinic. Reports on the street have suggested she
might have been thrown from the upper window by drug dealers for
unpaid debts.

Drug dealers are said to have been inflicting violence on women in the
area and shaving their heads for nonpayment of drug debts.

Robertson said the city was determined to go after such drug
dealers.

"We won't tolerate the targeting of vulnerable women," said Robertson.
He urged anyone who had information about such crimes to use the tip
line.

Machiskinic's cousin Mona Woodward, executive director of the
Aboriginal Front Door Society, who joined Chu and Robertson at the
launch, said Sister Watch would encourage people to come forward with
information against the perpetrators of the violence.

She said she hoped it would result in information being given to the
police about her cousin's death.

"I feel more confident that this process will convince people to come
forward. I have been hoping for something like this for a long time,"
said Woodward.

Chu said police were investigating a number of tips.

Woodward, meanwhile, chided the media for referring to the women who
suffer the violence as sex-trade workers or drug addicts.

"These are human beings, and portraying them in negative ways is not
doing justice to them," she said.