COP CRACKDOWN WORKS FOR EASTSIDE, BUT IS CRIME MOBILE?

If you drive criminal behaviour out of one neighbourhood, does it show up
with equal force in another one? That's the $2.3-million question the
Vancouver City Police have put to the citizens. It's usually answered with
the waterbed metaphor: put your foot down in one corner and the water
bulges up everywhere else. No water ever disappears.

Businesses all over the region have been bracing for, and sometimes facing,
a bulge in crime in their neighbourhoods since the Vancouver police put a
big foot down in the Downtown Eastside in early April. The police have
asked the City of Vancouver for $2.3 million, in addition to their
$133-million budget to cover the extra costs of overtime from this
initiative. With the three-month time limit coming due, everyone is
wondering whether it's working. In particular, where have the bad guys
gone? Businesses in the Dunsmuir and Seymour area and further out along
East Hastings say part of the crime has moved into their area, with junkies
shooting up in their alleys and breaking into their stores and cars. Some
of the younger addicts are congregating around the youth services centres
at the south end of Granville downtown. Surrey and New Westminster are
feeling threatened.

The police enforcement initiative must be evaluated at several levels:

the impact on the health of addicts who may not come to Downtown Eastside
health centres for fear of getting arrested;

the follow-through in the courts for people who have been charged;

the fairness of the police; and

the matching efforts in harm reduction, treatment and prevention.

But the first test is its impact on the streets of the Downtown Eastside.
Have they been made more orderly? By all accounts the answer is a
resounding yes. Everyone I've talked to who lives and works in the area
senses an improvement. People feel safer on the street. Residents can walk
around without as much fear of being hassled by dealers. Even some addicts
have been saying they appreciate the new civility in the neighbourhood.

To answer the question of displacement, I went to hear James Q. Wilson, who
was in Vancouver last month at a Fraser Institute lunch. He's the co-author
of the broken windows theory that says that the best way to fight serious
crime is to fight the disorder that precedes it and weakens a neighbourhood
- - panhandling, graffiti, people sleeping on the sidewalks, squatters taking
over a park.

"The public values order as much as it values crime reduction," he said.
"You have to take minor crimes seriously. The people who live in a
neighbourhood value public order. When the good guys are in control, people
feel better and use public spaces more freely.

"Police foot patrols don't drive down crime, but they make people happy
because they make people think the good guys are in control."

When the good guys take over the streets, the malignant synergies flip into
a positive direction. Addicts are better behaved on the streets and order
gains its own momentum. The dealers from out of the area can't find their
drive-through customers as easily. Shooting up in public is no longer a
divine right.

The police readily admit they aren't solving the drug problem - they're
only creating a little more public order, knowing the addicts will shoot up
somewhere else, most likely indoors. That's OK. That's an improvement. As
Wilson says, "Selling outside disturbs people; selling inside doesn't."

There have to be minimum standards of acceptable behaviour in the streets.
"Addicts don't have a human right to be obnoxious," noted an article in the
Carnegie Centre newsletter. Private campers, no matter how desperate, don't
have the right to take over public parks.

Arrests are only a start. Wilson also calls for parole officers with
authority, drug treatment programs that people stay in, painting out all
graffiti and neighbourhood courts that can deal with trivial offences
immediately.

While we work on all that, let's get back to the displacement question:
does the waterbed metaphor hold? Are we just shifting crime around? Do
displaced criminals pick up at the same pace in other areas? Wilson says no.

"The evidence suggests that break-and-enter and auto theft don't go up
correspondingly."

The reason is that a crime hotbed needs four conditions to thrive: a high
concentration of low-income housing, good transportation access, lots of
single-room occupancy residences and lots of customers. Very few areas have
all those attributes, so when crime is displaced, it is usually diluted.

Wilson is a believer in old-school policing, where the police help street
kids and run soup kitchens, knowing better than anyone that crime is only a
symptom. We can't allow ourselves to be fooled into thinking that spending
on enforcement, even with that multi-function police role, will ever be as
effective in dealing with crime and drugs as helping low-income families
during the first six years of their children's lives.

Damaged children grow up to wreak damage on themselves and many others.

In the meantime, we need to keep the streets safe in every neighbourhood in
the city.

Fixing the small problems there also produces big rewards.

Peter Ladner is a Vancouver city councillor and vice-president, Business in
Vancouver Media Group. His column appears weekly.