Pubdate: Wed, 18 Jul 2001
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2001 The Vancouver Sun
Contact:  http://www.vancouversun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Lindsay Kines

DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE IS A DRUG WAREHOUSE, POLICE SAY

Vancouver's open-air drug market on the Downtown Eastside has worsened over 
the past year with more addicts, more drugs, and more open use on the 
street than ever before, says a Vancouver city police officer.

Sergeant Mark Horsley, who led a recent crackdown on drug traffickers, said 
the neighbourhood is now in crisis with an infrastructure that supports 
drug addicts with needle "giveaway programs," but fails to provide them 
with any treatment or prevention services.

"At what point do we say we're in a crisis and we need to intervene?" he asked.

Horsley said a recent joint forces buy-and-bust project arrested 119 people 
- -- three of them twice -- seized six loaded, unregistered handguns, and 
resulted in 191 criminal charges over 12 days.

Of those arrests, 44 were made outside the Carnegie Centre at Main and 
Hastings in the heart of the Downtown Eastside.

But if the numbers were disturbing, Horsley said the circumstances of some 
of the arrests were even more alarming.

He said undercover officers trying to buy drugs were offered free needles 
with their purchases in an attempt by dealers to encourage intravenous drug 
use.

Horsley said he watched a guy sell a rock of cocaine to a "kid who couldn't 
have been more than 15."

And he said investigators determined the Downtown Eastside has become a 
drug warehouse, supplying drugs at wholesale prices to "retail" dealers who 
then distribute them to neighbourhoods throughout the Lower Mainland, 
including at least one high school.

"They're doing a very good job and they're marketing their product and it's 
really much farther into the community than just the Downtown Eastside."

As a result, the buy-and-bust project included investigators from the 
Organized Crime Agency as well as the Surrey and Coquitlam RCMP, which have 
recognized the impact of the Downtown Eastside drug market on their 
neighbourhoods, Horsley said.

John Turvey, who oversees the Downtown Eastside needle exchange that 
distributed 3.4 million syringes last year, acknowledged the desperate need 
for more treatment and detox facilities. He also agreed that the drug 
trafficking problem has expanded dramatically over the years.

"But historically, along with the absence of a lot of treatment facilities, 
has been the absence of just meat-and-potatoes law enforcement," he said. 
"It hasn't been adequate."

He also objected to Horsley characterizing the needle exchange as a 
"giveaway" since, he says, the program recovers more than 100 per cent of 
the needles it distributes.

"So it's not a giveaway, and that's a misleading statement," he said. Harm 
reduction programs like the needle exchange have as important a role to 
play as treatment and detox, he said. "We all have a role in the continuum 
of care. . . . One only enhances the other."

Michael Clague, executive director of the Carnegie Centre, also defended 
needle exchange programs. "Our experience is that people who are addicts go 
to where the drugs are, and whether or not there are needles and clean 
water and the rest of it available, is purely incidental to the need to get 
drugs.

"The point is, if the free needles weren't there, people would be using 
dirty needles and the diseases associated with that would be spreading even 
more than they are now."

But Clague said the police are in a difficult position, trying to enforce 
the law, while waiting for the arrival of other components in Vancouver's 
four-pillar drug strategy, which calls for treatment, harm reduction and 
prevention -- as well as policing.

"We hope it's on it's way," Clague said. "But there's no doubt that 
everybody -- including the police -- are working with one hand tied and, 
therefore, their actions cannot really be successful until these other 
services are in place."

In the meantime, Horsley said drug dealers are refining their own 
strategies for getting more people hooked on drugs.

The traffickers now package all their products -- cocaine, heroin or 
marijuana -- in $10 amounts so that they're easily affordable to anyone, 
including children, he said. And what the dealers lose by offering low, 
introductory prices, they make up later in volume of sales once the buyer 
gets addicted.

"I think most people think a street trafficker is making just a few bucks 
to support his habit, and that's really not the case," Horsley said.

Police say drug trafficking has become so profitable that some dealers make 
up to $5,000 a day, while paying "employees" $50 or five rocks of crack, 
whichever they prefer, to do counter-surveillance on the police.

Horsley said he doesn't for a minute believe that police enforcement alone 
will solve the problem. He supports drug treatment, drug education, drug 
courts and proper care for the mentally ill, many of whom become easy prey 
for drug dealers.

But in the absence of any of these services, Horsley said law-abiding 
people still have the right to feel safe on the streets.

"They have the right to walk down the street without being offered a rock 
of cocaine or fearing that their child can spend their allowance becoming 
addicted to an illicit substance," he said.

"I'm just a cop. I do enforcement. I try to change behaviour by being there 
and arresting people. It's not enough. But at least we're trying."

Horsley said one of the key components of the buy-and-bust project will be 
follow-up research to track the jail sentences and bail conditions handed 
each of the accused.

Police will also be working with welfare fraud investigators to identity 
people collecting social assistance, while earning money as drug traffickers.
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MAP posted-by: Beth