WEST ENDERS GIVE MLA AN EARFUL OVER DRUG CULTURE

The current state of fear and loathing in the West End cannot be blamed
entirely on displaced skid-row dealers and junkies.

"Yes, there's been some displacement but clearly the changes that we see in
the West End are to a great extent the result of other factors," says VPD
Inspector Larry Weeks, who spoke last Thursday at a community forum on the
growing concern over safety in the neighbourhood.

Vancouver-Burrard MLA Lorne Mayencourt organized the meeting in response to
the barrage of telephone calls he's been fielding from constituents fed up
by the increase in crime and drug-dealing in the West End.

Recently, a resident told Mayencourt that items stolen from their West End
home during a B&E ended up among items being sold by an illegal vendor at
Nelson Park.

"People are feeling as though they are losing the neighbourhood," says
Mayencourt, noting that he also received a complaint from a mother who was
concerned about her daughter attending Lord Robert Annex elementary school
because of the growing number of pushers and hypes loitering around Nelson
Park. "That's a terrible thing."

Mayencourt, who has hosted around a half-dozen forums on the subject of
community safety since February, believes the community needs "to work
together to make the neighbourhood safe again."

The Liberal MLA believes that West Enders are galvanized and willing to
work together to improve things in the neighbourhood, much like the
Concerned Residents Of the West End (CROWE) did with their Shame the Johns
campaign in the 1980s. "The West End is good for that."

The phone inside Lorne Mayencourt's office isn't the only one ringing off
the hook these days.

"Clearly there are a lot of concerned citizens," says Weeks.

The most common complaint: drug dealing, aggressive panhandlers, transient
and homeless people loitering in the parks and private property and illegal
street vendors.

Weeks admits that there has been some displacement into the West End as a
result of the VPD's Citywide Enforcement Team (CET) crackdown on the
Downtown Eastside, but points out that the crystal-meth dealers and
transients who cash in on the high-density community's recyclable trade
pre-date the drug dragnet.

As well, "some resources from the Citywide Enforcement Team have been used
to deal with displacement issues," he says. In June, "Project Boomerang," a
three-week undercover drug sting to deal with the migration of dealers to
other parts of Vancouver due to the crackdown, resulted in 60 drug-related
charges laid against 42 individuals, most of whom worked the Granville Mall
area. (Surprisingly, only 16 per cent the Granville strip dealers charged
by police-32 men, 10 female, ranging in age from 16 to 68-hailed from the
Downtown Eastside.)

And while Mayencourt agrees that some of the West End's crime-related
problems existed before CET, he says the project has affected the community
in terms of longer response times to calls.

"They don't have enough officers to get things done."

A downtown population boom coupled with a growing number of new duties
(bars closing at 4 a.m., for instance) has left the police force hamstrung.

"We want to inform the community about some of the challenges the police
department faces in terms of resources. The reality is we don't have enough
resources," Weeks says.

In order to make people feel safe on the streets, Mayencourt says the
community is looking at programs like Apartment Watch, an urban offshoot of
the Block Watch program that provides a safe haven for those who feel
threatened.

"The only way we can get our neighbourhood back is if we get the community
involved."