MORE COPS NEEDED TO DEAL WITH DRUG PROBLEM

City police are requesting 44 extra officers to deal with the expected flow
of drug users and dealers into the Downtown Eastside if Surrey goes ahead
with a promised crackdown.

In the lead-up to the civic election, incumbent Surrey Mayor Doug McCallum
campaigned on a get-tough-on-crime platform, including a promise to fund an
extra 60 RCMP officers for the Surrey detachment and focus on drug use in
his municipality.

Insp. Bob Rich, commander of District Two-which covers Strathcona,
Grandview-Woodlands and Hastings-Sunrise-said more police are needed to
deal with people coming from municipalities like Surrey that don't offer
the same services. "We've created our own nightmare. We provide all the
services in one place, then wonder why we have so many drug addicts here,"
he said. "I want drug addicts that live in Surrey to live and stay in their
own communities and deal with their problems there."

McCallum recently announced plans to charge methadone clinics that want to
set up in that community a prohibitive $15,000 business licence fee.

Rich plans to present the request for additional officers at a police board
meeting next month. If it supports the proposal, which would increase
District Two staffing to 214 officers, the board will pass on the request
to city council in January.

Rich said a beefed-up police presence is the only way to end the open drug
market that plagues the Downtown Eastside. "To predict how a new council
will approach this is difficult. But if the four pillars are to work, you
have to put funding into enforcement."

The request for more officers comes just months after council agreed to
fund an extra 20 officers for the Downtown Eastside, bringing sworn police
force numbers up to 1,126, which is still fewer per capita than police
forces in Calgary and Edmonton.

Rich said 20 positions within his command are currently unfilled because so
many police officers are retiring each year. "The syndrome is we are
retiring 60 people a year, so we are constantly replacing them and at the
same time trying to recruit. In 2002, we got an extra 30 bodies but we had
to hire 90 to get back to strength and that's a lot of recruits."

Rich said his proposal is to dedicate the extra officers to the Downtown
Eastside, so police can respond to the open drug market wherever it moves.

"We want to be able to tell a drug trafficker that 'We want you to find a
different way to sell drugs. We aren't going to let you stand on our street
corners anymore in the City of Vancouver.'"

All three major parties in Saturday's municipal election promised to
support former Mayor Philip Owen's four pillar approach to the city's drug
problem: prevention, treatment, harm reduction and enforcement.

McCallum was not available for comment at the Courier's press time.