DRUG PROBLEM A BALANCING ACT FOR NEXT VPD CHIEF

The city's next police chief will have a difficult job supporting the
mayor's liberal drug policies while frontline officers continue to
criticize harm reduction initiatives.

That's the opinion of Tom Stamatakis, president of the Vancouver
Police Union, who said officers "see the whole harm reduction focus of
our drug strategies in this community as having been a failure."

Stamatakis was referring to Insite, the city's supervised injection
site that opened in September 2003 on East Hastings, and the needle
exchanges that lead to needles being discarded in parks and school
grounds.

Despite Insite staff witnessing an average of 600 injections per day,
and Insite supporters heralding the facility's success, Stamatakis
said public drug use remains prevalent in the Downtown Eastside.

"So how do you reconcile that with the frontline police officers who
are faced with a deteriorating situation in the Downtown Eastside and
other parts of our community and who see this whole sort of atmosphere
of permissiveness being a big cause of that?"

Mayor Sam Sullivan and his predecessors, Larry Campbell and Philip
Owen, support Insite. Sullivan is pushing for a substitution treatment
program for 800 addicted criminals in the Downtown Eastside.

As mayor, Sullivan is automatically appointed chair of the Vancouver
Police Board. The police board sets policy for the police department,
including drug policy.

Sullivan also has a vote in choosing the next police
chief.

Police Chief Jamie Graham began his job in August 2002. Since then,
the injection site opened and heroin trials have operated in the
Downtown Eastside.

Graham once called marijuana a "gateway drug" to harder narcotics such
as cocaine and heroin. Over the years, the former RCMP
superintendent's public views softened and he wrote a letter to Health
Canada last year supporting the extension of Insite's operating contract.

Graham retires in August and six candidates, including three senior
officers within the Vancouver Police Department, have applied to
become the city's next chief.

As reported in the Courier May 9, the VPD candidates are Deputy Chief
Bob Rich, Deputy Chief Jim Chu and Supt. Kash Heed. The other three
candidates are from "outside Vancouver," according to the police board.

Rich and Chu have fallen in line with Graham's views while Heed has
called on federal legislators to consider the decriminalization of
marijuana and for addicts to be treated through the medical system,
instead of being jailed.

Stamatakis said the union won't participate in the selection of a new
chief and he was careful not to say whether he favoured a VPD member
or an external candidate.

That fact that Rich is a former head of the police union wouldn't
necessarily place him as a favourite among officers, Stamatakis said.

"But it's always more of a challenge when somebody from outside the
organization comes into a position like that-both for the person
coming in and for the organization," Stamatakis said. "But it's
probably fair to say that having Jamie come in from outside worked out
fairly well, I think."

He added that Graham and his deputy chiefs have worked well together
over the last few years and "perhaps now might not be the best time
for somebody to come from outside."

The seven-member police board hasn't set a deadline for when they will
name a new chief. The competition for the job closed May 4.