Pubdate: Sat, 12 Apr 2003
Source: Winnipeg Free Press (CN MB)
Copyright: 2003 Winnipeg Free Press
Contact:  http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/502
Author: Amy Carmichael

VANCOUVER DRUG SWEEP ENDANGERS PROSTITUTES

VANCOUVER -- A police crackdown in skid row is breaking up hooker buddy 
systems, driving them off into dark alleys where they are more likely to be 
attacked, street counsellors said yesterday.

The social workers were outraged that only the enforcement arm of a plan to 
clean up the open drug market on the Downtown Eastside has been 
implemented, while funding for treatment programs is still being haggled over.

Annabel Webb, an spokeswoman for Justice for Girls, said a "police state" 
has been imposed on the neighbourhood.

"How else would one describe the extreme police presence, the mass 
searches, interrogations, and arbitrary detainments, or the suspension of 
liberty and mobility rights of the residents."

Sixty officers have been pulled from divisions around the city to take part 
in the three-month sweep. Thirty officers are on patrol 24 hours a day on 
foot, horseback, bikes and in cruisers, looking for drug traffickers.

Wanda Villanueva, a counsellor at the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, 
said women she works with don't trust police and are hiding from them, 
working in back alleys and trolling alone on the outskirts of the Downtown 
Eastside so as not to attract their attention. "That's creating a more 
dangerous situation for them, but on the Downtown Eastside these women are 
being targeted by police, thrown up against walls and harassed," she said. 
"We are worried that at the end of this we'll only have more missing women."

Vancouver police Const. Sarah Bloor said hookers are not the target of the 
sweep and that officers routinely patrol areas where they are known to 
frequent, "but we can't be there all the time."

"There are serious dangers associated with the sex trade and with getting 
into a stranger's vehicle."

Counsellors working with the addicts and hookers stuck in the notorious 
ghetto say the timing of the sweep is cruel and that police should have 
waited until a proposed safe injection site was built and the street people 
had a safe place to go.

"It tells me that the police want a budget increase and they have a lot of 
power, because they got what they wanted," said Daisy Kler, a spokeswoman 
for the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter.

Mayor Larry Campbell had promised to have a safe-injection site in 
operation as soon as possible after his election in November. But it was 
put on hold while Health Canada developed a process for applying for a 
safe-injection site.

Ultimately, the city health authority's proposal didn't go to Ottawa until 
March 7 and only after a last-minute visit in February to a safe-injection 
site in Zurich by four top health-authority planners. Now they must wait 
for federal approval.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens