METH TASK FORCE CONFISCATING SHOPPING CARTS

Some creative methods have been used in the fight to get people off the
streets and into addiction treatment facilities in Maple Ridge, one of
which also returns shopping carts to the stores they came from.

The Maple Ridge Crystal Meth Task Force, along with RCMP community policing
and the municipal bylaws department, have taken the unpopular method begun
by Kelowna RCMP earlier this year and improved on it.

Kelowna, which caused a public outcry on account of its policy of seizing
shopping carts - which cost more than $200 each - wheeled by the city's
homeless.

Maple Ridge has been doing the same thing, but is doing so with the general
co-operation of the homeless in an effort to help them get into treatment.

"Our goal is not to put them in jail," said Gord Robson, one of the
founders of the meth task force.

"In our imaginations, we declared them stolen vehicles."

Using this approach, it has been possible to talk to Maple Ridge's homeless
with several carts, and ask if they are aware they are possessing stolen
property.

If the person with the cart is defiant, the simple route is to ask them if
they had permission to keep that cart.

Most of the time, knowing the police would have a case, the cart would be
relinquished.

Const. Chuck Glover of the RCMP said the intent is not to bully or target
the poor, but to help.

Since Glover and the bylaws department have built up a rapport with many of
the homeless, there is a window through which to communicate with them.

Glover said most have cooperated.

One man they approached last year had a train of carts. He complied with
the request to give up the cart, and entered treatment.

Glover stressed that about 90 per cent of the time, the carts collected had
been abandoned.

For example, he said employees from the bylaws department found about 10
carts the other day.

For those that are still in the possession of a street person, Glover said
it hasn't been difficult to convince them.

"You go and explain it [the stolen property argument] to some of these
people, and they say, okay, forget it, here you go," Glover said. Part of
the reason for placing emphasis on shopping carts is to make it easier to
bring them into treatment.

One of the conditions of the Salvation Army Caring Place, for example, is
no shopping carts. Individuals seeking help must come with just themselves.

Occasionally, someone brings a cart, and the workers at the Caring Place
ask the individual to take it away. Generally, they said there is
compliance, but sometimes the centre has the carts removed.

Glover said Kelowna's method - forcibly confiscating carts - is not the way
to go.

"Kelowna's doing it wrong," he said.

"When we were dealing with it, we probably got double or triple the number
[of carts] Kelowna did," he added.

However, Const. Patrick Hughson, currently working as part of community
policing, said he has been in charge of contacting the Kelowna detachment
to find out how its approach works, to see if Maple Ridge might try
something similar.

"We're looking at every option, at other peoples' successes and failures,"
he said.

"We want to look at other models, see how others are handling it."

Glover said it was a tactic being used at the team's discretion, not all
the time.

"It was all meant to ultimately get them over to Barb [Wardrope] at the
Caring Place, and get them into detox," he said.

He said it is not an option that has been actively pursued by the three
groups, but it is an option available to them if necessary.

When the method has been employed, Glover said none of the street people
were actually charged for stolen property, it was more a means to speak to
them and convince them to give up the carts in an effort to get them help.