SULLIVAN'S CRITICS TAKING HEAT

Sam Sullivan displays an amazing ability to dodge bullets. All that
stuff about James Green didn't leave a mark on him. And he got away
with running ads opposing the ward system on the very day that voters
went to the polls to vote on the issue.

Now our mayor-elect is about to have another one blow by him. This
one is a small calibre shot fired over his habit of buying drugs for
junkies over the past few years. And ironically the guys doing the
shooting are the ones getting shot.

As we all know by now, Sullivan says he bought those drugs out of a
sense of compassion for the addicts and to develop a better
understanding of drug addiction.

Vancouver Police Chief Jamie Graham says that when he read about
Sullivan's activities in the paper during the election campaign, he
decided a criminal law may have been broken. He realized he could be
in a conflict of interest if Sullivan could become his boss. After
talking with the province's conflict commissioner, he asked the RCMP
to review the matter.

While Graham was doing that-unbeknownst to his own police board-the
chair of the board, Mayor Larry Campbell, was dashing off a letter to
the province's Solicitor General to question Sullivan's suitability
to sit as chair of the board should he win the election.

Neither the Solicitor General nor the RCMP were happy with what ended
up in their laps.

But more to the point, while Campbell publicly questioned Sullivan's
judgment and lent his support to Jim Green, neither Graham nor
Campbell said a word about these particular activities until after
the election date.

When the news finally broke about what they were up to the response
was most remarkable. Sullivan said the drug buys were all old news
and this whole thing was politically motivated.

He said Campbell and Jim Green made so much noise about the issue
during the campaign the police chief was compelled to act. The line
was picked up by the Vancouver Sun, which, incidentally, endorsed
Sullivan for mayor.

A Vancouver Sun editorial declared both Graham and Campbell were
"playing politics," which is to say they were being less than honest
in their motives. Sullivan purchasing drugs for a crack addict so he
could smoke the stuff in Sullivan's van while he watched was no
different, the Sun argued, than Campbell endorsing the distribution
of clean needles. Sullivan's van was no different than Campbell's
supervised injection site. Both enabled addicts to use illegal drugs.

As for Graham, he was motivated by nothing more than concern over his
own budget. Sullivan wanted to pay for any extra police out of
departmental "efficiencies" rather than suck more dough out of the
public purse.

While all this was happening, Graham was also coming under attack
from one of Sullivan's more vocal supporters, Ann Livingston, with
the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users.

VANDU was unhappy because as soon as the election was over, in an
apparent attempt to push more users into an injection site already at
capacity, the cops decided to start busting junkies who were fixing
in plain view near the site.

Typical of Graham, he told none of the people involved with the
city's drug strategy that he planned to do this. The police board,
city hall, Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, the needle exchange
and the folks who run the injection site only found out about it
either when Courier reporter Mike Howell called to get their reaction
or when they read the story in the papers.

So there sits Sullivan, once again a victim. This time, he's beset by
a self-serving soon-to-be-former mayor and a head cop with a
shoot-from-the-hip, Lone Ranger approach trying to bring him down.

Why can't they just leave him alone so he can govern?