POLICE FORM TASK FORCE TO TACKLE PROBLEM CRIME AREAS

Vancouver police are re-deploying more than 40 cops from various
departments, including community policing offices, to create a city-wide
enforcement team to tackle problem crime areas, the Courier has learned.

The enforcement team will begin its work April 7 and will likely focus on
the Downtown Eastside before moving to other areas in the city, where the
public will see more uniformed cops on the streets.

The team will operate for at least three months, but will not pull
resources from patrol divisions. Resources will come from community
policing offices, administration and operational sections.

Police are not releasing details, but Insp. Jim Chu said the team's goal is
to suppress crime driven by the drug trade, much of it rooted in the
Hastings corridor.

"Suppose we start in the Downtown Eastside and problems spill over to other
areas of the city. Then the city-wide task force has the responsibility of
moving to other parts of the city," said Chu, who is in charge of policing
the West Side of the city.

With a supervised injection site likely to be open in the Downtown Eastside
in April, Chu said police also hope extra enforcement will "improve the
environment" along Hastings for addicts using the site.

Earlier this year, police conducted a "core review" of their operations to
determine where to obtain resources for the enforcement team. The
department separated its functions into essential, important and discretionary.

Community policing advocates, however, are worried about losing liaison
officers to the new team at a time when some of the 17 community policing
offices are facing possible closure by June. "The community office has
proven that it can run effectively-it's cheap and it's done some fantastic
work in this city on crime prevention," said Chris Taulu, coordinator of
the Collingwood Policing Office.

Taulu is unsure whether Collingwood will lose its constable to the
enforcement team, and isn't happy about being kept out of the loop. "We
hear this stuff and then all of sudden police officers are disappearing to
work somewhere else."

Eileen Mosca, a volunteer at Grandview-Woodland Policing Office and
co-chair of the community policing advisory committee, said she understands
the police department's struggle to get funding to hire more cops-the
department is requesting 44 cops be hired for the Downtown Eastside-but
said the department shouldn't be taking officers from community offices.
The Dunbar and Riley Park offices have both lost constables to the
enforcement team, she said.

"Obviously, management has a choice of where to get that manpower from, and
this choice seems to me to indicate that this is an area they feel it is OK
to pull manpower."

Chu, however, disagrees.

"It's not that we don't think that that work is important; it's just that
we think this work is more important at this time," he said.

The province recently cancelled its $150,000 annual grant for crime
prevention programs run out of community offices.

City council, which had provided a matching $150,000 grant, agreed to fund
the 17 offices until the end of June.

Police chief Jamie Graham told the Courier last month that he might
consider taking money from the police budget to keep offices running and
using the city's existing $150,000 grant to fund crime prevention programs.