DESPITE POLICE EFFORTS, 'DRUGS ARE HERE TO STAY'

The Vancouver police department's citywide enforcement team is an ambitious
strategy that does not come without a cost. One of the costs to Commercial
Drive has been the loss of the constable assigned to the Grandview-
Woodland Community Policing Centre and the area's two beat officers.

A recent incident illustrates the loss. A squeegee kid left his puppy with
a friend on the drive while he worked the First and Victoria intersection.
When a local couple insisted the dog was their stolen puppy, the friend
reluctantly gave it up and followed them to see where they lived. The
distraught squeegee kid came into our community policing centre, produced
pictures of the pup and asked for help to get it back.

Our beat officers went to the home of the couple and mediated the ownership
discussion. The residents claimed their dog had an identifying scar under
its fur and the squeegee kid said his dog didn't. The constables took the
puppy to the SPCA where its leg was shaved, revealing no scar. The pup was
then reunited with its owner, a street kid who had been respectfully dealt
with by CPC volunteers and the police.

This solution averted the inevitable 911 calls that would have resulted
from whatever actions the squeegee kids might have felt compelled to take
to recover the puppy.

This sort of community-based, problem-solving policing has been replaced by
what locals are calling cops in cars. Area-specific police resources have
been removed from neighbourhoods surrounding the Downtown Eastside just
when we believe we will need them most, and the human face of the VPD our
community has come to know and trust has disappeared.

We sincerely hope that by June 30 the enforcement team project will have
made a positive impact on the Downtown Eastside. We fear that by then the
related negative impacts on our neighbourhood will be profound.

Eileen Mosca

On behalf of the board of directors

Grandview-Woodland Community Policing Centre