THE VANCOUVER WOMEN IN DIRE NEED OF PROTECTION

Vancouver's Downtown Eastside at times seems more of a war zone than an
inner-city neighbourhood. Violence, drug use and prostitution are rampant.
That's why the Vancouver Police Department increased the number of officers
patrolling the community from 20 to 60 in a drug crackdown last year. And
that's why the City of Vancouver has opened the first safe drug-injection
site in North America there.

While government and police have acted boldly on the drug front, however,
an even more troubling problem appears to have been largely overlooked.
Violence against street prostitutes has reached epidemic proportions.

John Turvey, a social activist in the area, has for years talked of a "wave
of misogyny" there. Fifteen years ago, he helped start the Bad Date List.
Distributed to prostitutes, and now e-mailed regularly to the police
department, the newsletter compiles reports from prostitutes of violence
against them. Mr. Turvey believes there are many more than the 500 to 800
beatings, rapes, robberies and knifings a year reported in the list, but
few of the victims talk to police. In the Downtown Eastside, that
reluctance has put them at terrible risk.

It was there that Robert William Pickton, the former pig farmer charged
with 22 counts of first-degree murder, is alleged to have gone to pick up
prostitutes. It took years for police to realize that women were vanishing
from the streets. By the time the hunt for a serial killer began, more than
100 had disappeared.

More concerns surfaced last month when a Vancouver hotel worker was
arrested in the Downtown Eastside and charged with six counts of sexual
assault. Police say the investigation has led them to videotapes that show
60 different women being terrorized and assaulted. It was a shocking way
for investigators to find out what they had been missing.

The police say they take assaults on prostitutes seriously, and clearly
they have done so in the latest case, putting 34 officers on the
investigation. But once again, the response appears to have come years too
late.

The police can't be faulted for failing to act on crimes they aren't told
about. But why aren't they being called? The answer may lie in a report
last year by the Pivot Legal Society, a non-profit advocacy group.
Suspecting that street people were afraid to come forward, law students
went into the community, won the trust of individuals and gathered
affidavits alleging 57 incidents of police brutality. At the request of the
Police Complaints Commission, the RCMP is investigating those complaints to
determine whether charges are warranted.

Whether or not any officers are found to have acted illegally, it's clear
many people in the Downtown Eastside are suspicious and fearful of the
department. The force has to find a way somehow to overcome those fears,
and to convince vulnerable women working the Downtown Eastside that the
police are there to serve and protect all citizens. Safe injection sites,
detox centres and drug sweeps are important pieces in the puzzle, but it
does little good to save prostitutes from heroin overdoses only to leave
them to be beaten or killed on the streets.