Pubdate: Thu, 09 Jan 2014
Source: Georgia Straight, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2014 The Georgia Straight
Contact:  http://www.straight.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1084
Author: Charlie Smith

SURREY HAS AN OPPORTUNITY TO EMBRACE HARM REDUCTION AND REDUCE STREET 
DISORDER

TONIGHT, THE NEWTON Community Association will hold a public meeting
in the wake of the shocking murder of Julie Paskall.

The 53-year-old hockey mom was savagely beaten and robbed outside the
Newton Arena on December 29 on her way to pick up her teenage son, who
was refereeing a game.

One of the organizers is Doug Elford, a former candidate with the
progressive Surrey Civic Coalition council.

He was a strong supporter of the ward system in 2011, in which
candidates would be elected from their neighbourhoods rather than on a
citywide basis.

"Every day my neighbors live among poverty, homelessness, crime and
prostitution," Elford said in a candidate statement on the City of
Surrey website. "The current City Council does not listen."

He recently tweeted that he wants people to come to tonight's meeting
"with ideas and solutions and not just agendas".

It begins at 7 p.m. at the Newton Seniors Centre.

Crime creates fear in Newton

I went to Newton yesterday to check out the neighbourhood. I have
spent time there in the past doing volunteer work, so it's not foreign
turf for me.

During my visit, I spoke with a 27-year-old, university-educated woman
who's lived in the community for more than three years.

Not long ago, she quit a retail job in one of the shopping malls near
where the killing occurred.

She offered some blunt assessments of what it's like to live and work
in the area around 72 Avenue and King George Highway. (I've chosen not
to publish her name because I don't want to jeopardize her future
employment prospects.)

She said that her four-storey apartment has been broken into five
times in the past six months. She added that she sometimes feels
"terrified" living in the area, and doesn't go out at night. She also
avoids going to the bank after 4 p.m. for fear of being robbed.

When I asked what it was like working in a store in Newton, she
regaled me with stories of criminal activity. She's witnessed
assaults, as well as domestic disputes in the store. She was a victim
of a robbery. She's even seen sex workers propositioning prospective
clients on the premises.

The washrooms are used by people needing showers.

"We've had people doing coke of the back of our toilet tanks in the
washrooms," she said.

I asked if she thought that a supervised-injection site might
help.

"I don't see why they couldn't do something like that in Surrey," she
replied. "If it gives people a place that's safe, they wouldn't be
going into store washrooms to do it, and there's not going to be
needles on the sidewalk where kids are walking to school."

Minimal police presence

She added that there's a police station across the street from where
Paskall was murdered. But she claimed that it's no deterrent because
it closes at 5 p.m. weekdays and isn't open on weekends.

"When I used to live in Fleetwood, I would see the RCMP driving by all
the time," the young woman said. "And it's an area that doesn't really
need it."

In Newton, on the other hand, she claimed that the only officers on
her street seem to be doing spot checks on vehicles. At the store,
staff would call the police at least once a week to deal with criminal
activity, and sometimes two or three times. The Mounties often showed
up, but after reviewing videotapes, would usually say not much could
be done.

"What are they going to do to protect people who are walking down the
street? Why aren't there RCMP officers?" she asked.

Mayor Dianne Watts has claimed that 50 officers have been redeployed
to Newton and Whalley.

Unlike Elford, Watts and her Surrey First party have not supported a
ward system so that there's a politician representing the area who can
keep the pressure on the police.

Nor has Watts endorsed a supervised-injection site. In 2008, the mayor
tried to curb the proliferation of methadone maintenance with a bylaw
restricting new pharmacies from being created within 400 metres of
existing ones.

RCMP backed away from supporting harm reduction

In 2010, Maclean's magazine reported that the RCMP nearly issued a
statement in support of supervised-injection sites.

In a 2009 email to Dr. Julio Montaner of the B.C. Centre for
Excellence in HIV/AIDS, Mountie Bob Harriman reportedly declared that
the force was "good to go" with a joint announcement acknowledging the
value of these facilities.

But the plan was kiboshed at higher levels.

Since then, the Conservative government has introduced legislation
making it more difficult to gain community approval for new
supervised-injection sites.

The Mounties have still not publicly recognized the value of these
facilities in reducing street disorder or in saving lives, despite a
growing body of research.

Communities like Newton are paying the price for the reluctance of the
RCMP and suburban municipal politicians to acknowledge the reality
that people will continue using drugs with or without
supervised-injection sites, methadone-maintenance facilities, or
better social services.

Nothing anyone can do will bring back Julie Paskall. In no way am I
suggesting that the existence of a supervised-injection site would
have stopped a crazed killer from perpetrating this horrific crime on
her family.

But for other victims of crime in Newton-including the young woman I
spoke to yesterday-there are opportunities to enhance their safety.

Doug Elford says he wants people of his community to bring forward
solutions.

A good start would be for Surrey municipal politicians and the RCMP to
endorse proven harm-reduction measures to make Newton more livable.
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MAP posted-by: Matt