Pubdate: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 Source: North Shore News (CN BC) Copyright: 2000 by the North Shore News Contact: http://www.nsnews.com/ Author: Anna Marie D'Angelo Cited: http://www.oddsquad.com REAL LIFE IN ROUGH STREETS FOR COP Odd Squad Bring Human Touch To Downtown Eastside Policing VANCOUVER City Police Const. Dale Weidman leaves his comfortable Lynn Valley home and goes to work in a place most of us would be horrified to briefly visit. Weidman is a patrol officer who walks the beat in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The area is also called Skid Row or The Skids. He worked there for three years and has spent the last 2 1/2 years with a drug unit. Weidman is now back walking patrol along a seven-block area whose epicentre is the corner of Hastings and Main. "You would not last working down there if you don't have a sense of humour," said Weidman, 31. The married Victoria native is also part of a group of six Vancouver City police officers known as the Odd Squad. The police officers have all walked the beat in the Downtown Eastside. A few years ago, they got together and decided that outside work, they'd spend time lecturing to schools about drug abuse and their experiences with drug users. Eventually, they showed photographs of grim skid row life to students. The group wanted to make an educational video for schools at a time when there was media attention on degenerating conditions in the Downtown Eastside. To get financing for their school video, the Odd Squad, through their non-profit society Odd Squad Productions, made a deal with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) to film and be featured in a documentary. The Odd Squad gained national and international acclaim with the release of the graphic, unrefined documentary Through a Blue Lens. The one-hour documentary took about 18 months to complete and was premiered last November. It focuses on the lives of about a half-dozen "hard core" residents of the Downtown Eastside, one of them a West Vancouver-raised woman who has since kicked her drug habit. Weidman featured in a couple of short scenes in the documentary. Odd Squad Productions has not made any money from the documentary which was produced by the NFB. The Odd Squad consists of officers Al Arsenault, Toby Hinton, Mark Steinkamph, David Kolb, Len Hollingsworth and Weidman. Their mission statement is to educate the public about issues affecting communities. They continue to give school talks and work on drug abuse films. Weidman has been a police officer for more than eight years. He was in the army for three years and had other jobs before becoming a municipal police officer. Vancouver's Downtown Eastside is an area consisting of about seven blocks east and west of Main and Hastings (Carnegie Centre is the centre), including a small part of Chinatown. Unabashed drug needle use is everywhere. "People's existence is focused on just that," said Weidman. He said the area and everything in it is dirty. "Bodily functions," as Weidman describes it, are also everywhere. "There are no bathrooms. It's weird, there is a lot of s* and I don't see too many dogs running around," he quips, admitting to accidentally stepping in excrement on occasion. The area has become less violent over the last several years. "There used to be lots of stabbings and fights all the time. Now, coming back to it, the area has been essentially ghettoized. A lot of the stores are closed and some of the bars are even closed. A lot of people are out on the street," said Weidman. "I think there is not as much violence because they are just not able to carry it out as much because so many of the people down there are sick," said Weidman. The population in the Downtown Eastside is 16,000. About 4,700 of those residents are drug addicts, according to Dr. Mark Tyndall who heads the Vancouver Injection Drug Users Study (VIDUS). The study is based out of St. Paul's Hospital. HIV infection is pegged at 25% in the drug user population with 90% of them infected with Hepatitis C. The drug user's mortality rate is as high as 5% a year, according to VIDUS. Smoking rock (a mixture of cocaine and baking soda) is currently the most popular way to get stoned. Rock sells for $10 a hit which coincidently is the cost of a "trick" by a prostitute in the area. Weidman said it is "disgusting" the number of married men with children from the suburbs who frequent drug-addicted, ill prostitutes in the Downtown Eastside. "Sometimes you stop them (the johns) and say, 'Buddy, what are you doing? You're crazy.' ... What can they say? It is usually humble pie time," said Weidman. He said that drugs in the Downtown Eastside are not called exotic, slang names (horse, powder, dragon, etc.) as sometimes touted in educational literature from police. Cocaine, because of its effect, is called "up" and heroin is called "down." A monosyllabic drug deal takes seconds to complete. "Is it easy to buy drugs down there? Totally. Like shooting fish," said Weidman. Besides prostitution, the other main way to get money for drugs is to commit property crimes such as thefts, burglaries and selling stolen property. Weidman said the court and police infrastructures would collapse if officers enforced every drug infraction in the area. People are arrested for violent acts although not everyone gets charged. "Do I believe in punching women? Definitely not. But you have to look at what is going to come out of it," he said. Weidman considers whether there is alcohol involvement, whether the alleged victim will show up for court and whether a no-contact court paper is going to be obeyed by the offender. He also considers whether charging the alleged offender will make the situation worse. "As a police officer, I have to be able to justify what I have done," said Weidman. Weidman laughs when he hears the words "zero tolerance," a 90s expression touted by police administrators about how they plan to handle domestic violence and some other crimes. Weidman said that police officers with experience look at the "big picture" of life in the Downtown Eastside. "Everybody has their ideas about how to police down there," he said. Weidman said that after working there and knowing people in the Downtown Eastside, he has developed a "soft spot" for a lot of them. "I think the issues are way bigger than what the police department can do. Society has to get a grip on what they want to do with the drug problem and what they want to do down there," said Weidman. He said society's indecision about what to do about the drug problem is reflected in the way police do their work. On a typical 11-hour shift (four days on, four days off),Weidman usually checks the warrant list for people newly wanted for arrest before going out to walk the beat with another officer. (They are in and out of a police car during the shift.) The job involves checking premises for liquor, talking to people, interrupting arguments and borderline fights, checking out rooms in buildings and speaking to informants. Weidman said there were "predators" residing in the area. He said it was a dangerous place for someone that acts like a victim. People can be pleasant and cordial too, he said. "Contrary to what people think, they are not unfriendly to police," he said. Weidman said many people are aware that they are drug addicts and live miserably on the streets, but they can't get themselves out of their situation. Are drugs a symptom or a problem? "They are a problem," said Weidman without hesitation. "Being down there, anybody would find it impossible to kick an addiction just because there are so many triggers," he said. He said nothing can stop an addict who doesn't want to stop taking drugs. But there are also not enough detox centres and other resources for people who want to kick their addictions. He said that if drugs were legalized, police would be taken out of the picture and a government agency would control the activity through expensive bureaucracies. "I'm tired of all the talk about legalizing drugs. If we want to do something about it, we should get on with it," said Weidman. As far as drug prevention programs, Weidman said the D.A.R.E. program used in North Shore schools has evolved from the simplistic "just say no" to a life skills training. He said the program was good, but parents should probably be teaching their children what is taught in the D.A.R.E. curriculum. "An outside agency (police officers) is coming in and teaching values that should be instilled in kids by their parents," said Weidman. Weidman said Through a Blue Lens made many people aware of life in the Downtown Eastside. He said that the film highlighted the different backgrounds and demystified the people who end up in the area. "When you start talking to them, you find out their backgrounds are not a lot different from ours," he said. "A lot of them are there because of bad choices they made." Weidman said that he would have difficulty now working as a cop in a suburb such as North Vancouver because he couldn't "get too excited" about many of the alleged crimes that occur in the relatively crime-free affluent area. Weidman eventually would like to do other types of police work in Vancouver, but right now he is content walking the beat in the Downtown Eastside. "I wasn't forced to work down there. I volunteered," he said. The Odd Squad Productions Society Web site is (www.oddsquad.com). - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D