RESIDENTS, MERCHANTS REPORT AVALANCHE OF CRIME IN MOUNT PLEASANT

Mount Pleasant residents and business owners are fed up with street
crime, but police statistics suggest the area's problems are par for
the course.

Mount Pleasant-a neighbourhood bound by Cambie and Clark, and First
Avenue and 28th Avenue-straddles the city's east-west divide.

Bill Grulkey, owner of Commercial Picture Framing on East Broadway
and St. George Street, believes his neighbourhood is paying the price
for Mayor Sam Sullivan's crusade to eliminate homelessness,
panhandling and drug activity in the Downtown Eastside by 50 per cent by 2010.

"Mount Pleasant is the unofficial dumping ground for the Olympics,"
said Grulkey. "They've got to put them somewhere."

Although Grulkey lives in Fraserview, he's a member of Mount Pleasant
Cares and the Carolina Group-two organizations whose members patrol
the area in search of crime. He said most residents and business
owners report a stark increase in street crime over the past three or
four months.

However, according to Vancouver Police Department statistics, crime
rates in Mount Pleasant have remained constant since 2002.

VPD crime figures for April 2007-29 break and enters, 25 car thefts
and 81 thefts-are lower than April 2006 figures that include 29 break
and enters, 33 car thefts and 103 thefts, and April 2005 which saw 55
break and enters, 31 car thefts and 123 thefts. Statistics for May
and June of this year were not available.

Dan Carlson, Block Watch captain for the 500 block of East Eighth
Avenue, said the rapidly changing environment in his community is not
accurately reflected in VPD statistics.

"There are things we've witnessed and seen," said Carlson, a retired
tugboat operator who often observes drug deals from the patio of his
Eighth Avenue apartment.

Carlson wants the VPD to better cooperate with block watch members,
who report an increase in drug activity and attempted robberies, and
he echoed Grulkey's claim of a city hall strategy designed to push
Downtown Eastside crime into his neighbourhood. "There is a hidden
agenda, because of the worldwide publicity pertaining to Main and
Hastings, to solve that problem down there."

At the far south end of Mount Pleasant, business owners also report a
crime increase.

Tracey Porter, co-owner of Second Time Around antiques, has done
business in the neighbourhood for 28 years-the last 17 years at the
same location at 28th and Main.

"We have never seen this kind of rash of theft," she said, noting the
recent theft from her store of a 200-year-old mahogany Georgian
washstand valued at $2,000.

Porter pointed to break-ins in the past year at other nearby Main
Street businesses such as Coast Decorating, Wing Nuts and the Hair
Art salon. She blamed the crime problem on the lack of uniformed
police officers patrolling the area.

"We never see them, and it makes a huge difference," she said, adding
that Mount Pleasant's decade-long revitalization has not translated
into greater police support. "Our taxes have almost doubled in the
last few years and yet we are getting more and more crime."

Const. David Krenz, the VPD's block watch coordinator, could not be
reached for comment on this story.