Pubdate: Mon, 16 May 2005
Source: Victoria Times-Colonist (CN BC)
Copyright: 2005 Times Colonist
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/victoria/timescolonist/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/481
Author: Darah Hansen and Brad Badelt, CanWest News Service

VANCOUVER PUSHERS MOSTLY HOMEGROWN, ACCORDING TO STUDY

VANCOUVER -- Residents should stop blaming Central American immigrants for 
drug trafficking in the city and start looking at more effective solutions 
to a homegrown program that's not going away on its own, says Kash Heed, a 
Vancouver police department inspector and author of a groundbreaking study 
on street-level drug trafficking.

Heed's study -- conducted as part of his masters studies at Simon Fraser 
University -- paints a picture of the average drug dealer on the Downtown 
Eastside as a Canadian-born man between the ages of 23 and 45 -- a repeat 
criminal offender who supplements his drug income with a welfare cheque.

Heed said his findings debunk the popular image of a Vancouver street-level 
drug dealer: that of a Honduran "millionaire."

Heed's study is the result of 18 months work profiling 600 street-level 
drug dealers arrested on the Downtown Eastside between 2001 and 2002. 
According to his results: "Of the 600 people arrested, no less than 469 
were actually Canadian citizens -- a finding that runs contrary to public 
belief."

"That was no surprise to me," Heed said in an interview. (Formerly the head 
of the Vancouver police department's drug section, Heed spent more than six 
years policing the Downtown Eastside.)

"But it is a surprise to a lot of other people who, at that time, were 
saying, 'It's not our problem -- we inherited it from outside of Canada.'"

Central American immigrants -- fingered for much of Vancouver's street 
dealing over the last decade -- made up only 12 per cent of dealers 
involved in Heed's study.

"So, yes, the drugs come from outside of Canada, but the traffickers are 
our problem. They are Canadian-born individuals," Heed said.

It is the first demographic study on Downtown Eastside dealers, and 
immigrant advocates in the neighbourhood find the results encouraging.

Byron Cruz, a Downtown Eastside health care worker for nine years, said the 
city's negative perception of Central Americans has made it difficult for 
immigrants from that part of the world to find housing or even get a job.

"Guys are not finding housing anymore because people say, 'Oh no, it's a 
Latino guy. He must be a drug dealer,"' Cruz said.

He said social programs aimed at helping Latin American drug addicts kick 
the habit have resulted in fewer of them dealing on the streets.

"The main purpose of their drug dealing was because they needed to cope 
with their habit," Cruz said.

Not everyone had such a positive reaction to Heed's study results.

Rob Johnson, enforcement director for Canadian Border Services Agency, said 
the study could understate an ongoing and severe problem.

"There is a foreign criminal problem in Vancouver, no doubt," Johnson said.

According to Johnson, there has been a big increase in deportation of 
immigrants involved in criminal activity over the last three years -- the 
result, he said, of increased immigration enforcement.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman