POLICE SAY BETTER DRUG TREATMENT BEST WAY TO CONTROL STREET CRIME

City police and the Pivot Legal Society have temporarily put aside their
differences to form an unusual alliance, calling for more treatment beds to
help deal with the Downtown Eastside's chronic crime problem.

Until now, Pivot has been a staunch critic of the police, publishing
reports of officers' alleged violence against drug users and sex workers in
the troubled Downtown Eastside.

However, both groups agree a key way to help "revolving door" criminals in
the area is to provide more treatment for drug users, who commit startling
numbers of petty crimes to pay for their habits.

A 2001 police study of 70 Vancouver-area criminals found each had been
charged on average 77 times and convicted an average of 52 times. Those
convicted of drug trafficking received jail terms of between 50 and 60 days.

Insp. Val Harrison of the Vancouver Police Department said treatment
facilities in the city are inadequate, which she blamed in part for ongoing
street-level crime, including drug use and dealing, auto and other theft,
break and entering and public mischief.

Harrison is part of the 12-member Street Crime Working Group, formed by the
provincial Attorney General on Monday to find a better way for the criminal
justice system to respond to street-level criminals, who are often mentally
ill, drug-addicted or both.

"Until we have really good treatment programs and start dealing more
effectively with drug addicts, they are going to remain drug addicts,"
Harrison said. "We need to recognize that what we are doing now is not
effective. You have mentally ill addicts that do a lot of property crime
and they need treatment, but there are simply not enough resources for them."

Harrison estimates about 300 people in the Downtown Eastside are chronic
repeat offenders.

Pivot spokesman John Richardson said treatment needs to be available on
demand, and a "cushion" has to be provided for after the treatment is
completed. "So when they bounce out of the detox process, they aren't left
penniless in the Downtown Eastside to carve out a life for themselves,"
Richardson said. "That's a recipe for failure and that's why it fails
routinely."

Richardson said treatment is the one pillar in the city's four-pillar
strategy for reducing drug abuse that has so far been ignored. The other
pillars are harm reduction, enforcement and education.

"My very strong impression is we have money going into harm reduction, law
enforcement has no shortage of money, education is going on, but treatment
needs to be looked at," Richardson said. The city's supervised injection
site, for example, cost $1.2 million to build and $2 million a year to
operate, including $750,000 a year for PHS Community Services Society to
provide peer support at the site.

"Getting people off drugs is a long process and requires significant
investment," Richardson said. "If you are really interested in addressing
the causes of issues like street crime, then it will take an investment in
treatment and it's totally worth it."

In January, the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority announced it was
revising its addiction services model after addiction, mental health and
HIV/AIDS services in the region were merged under the health authority's
control.

The health authority has no plans to increase residential detox beds in the
city. Instead, it will focus on one-stop-shopping treatment for addicts at
eight health centres in the city. At the centre, addicts will be offered
counselling, day detox, home-based detox, needles and methadone.