Pubdate: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 Source: Ottawa Citizen (CN ON) Copyright: 2007 The Ottawa Citizen Contact: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/letters.html Website: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/326 KEEP THE DEALERS OUT Ottawa's homeless shelters have the beginning of an answer to the million-dollar question of what to do with homeless drug dealers who've been charged by police. Stop bringing them to us, they say. The heads of the Mission, the Shepherds of Good Hope and the Salvation Army have written a letter to police, meant to be read by judges who deal with the street-level addicts who deal on the side to support their own habits. The shelters beg the authorities not to leave homeless people facing such charges on the shelters' doorsteps. More than that, they want judges to stop ordering such people to live at the shelters, as sometimes happens when the judges hope doing so will bring some stability to the alleged dealers' lives. This isn't hard-heartedness on the part of the people who do some of the dirtiest charity work in the city. It's a properly hard-headed response to the serious threat dealers pose to other homeless people. Shelters, once meant to catch the desperately homeless before they froze to death on cold nights, have become catch-alls, expected not only to house people who need a roof in an emergency, but to help treat the problems that put them on the street, too. They've responded heroically, matching the most desperate among us with services and people who will strive mightily to help them. But some problems are beyond them. Alcoholics and most people with mental illnesses usually pose their greatest dangers to themselves; dealers are most dangerous to others. Shelters are good at keeping people warm. While they may also provide services, they aren't drug-treatment centres, they aren't mental wards, and they aren't particularly good at supervising people who need to be watched every minute. It's not what they're for. So expecting -- actually, requiring -- shelters to take in people who the police accuse of actively preying on others is not only unfair to the shelters, but an added danger to the people the shelters are supposed to serve. It's true that accused drug dealers are legally innocent until proven guilty, but that's not the standard the shelters should need to apply. Ordinarily, shelter staff can use their own discretion to kick people out for making trouble. It's senseless to take that prerogative away from them precisely because someone's gotten so disruptive the police have laid charges. What's to be done instead? That's the hard thing. Ottawa has almost no residential drug-treatment programs to speak of, which might help those who deal drugs because they need the money for their own addictions; we have little place for the dangerously mentally ill; the detention centre on Innes Road is no place for someone who needs help with either problem. Providing the supports to help people who truly cannot help themselves is an expensive prospect, but it's the right thing to do, and cheaper than treating only the symptoms. It's certainly better than dumping predatory drug dealers right back on their victims. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek