The Peak 8
May 5, 2003
Features
features editor email phone
Rhiannon Coppin features@mail.peak.sfu.ca 604-291-4630
Witnessing
the Downtown Eastside
Stephen Hui photo by Josh Devins
A
police car drives up to a street corner in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and everyone scatters. In five minutes, a city block goes from bustling to deserted. This already common scene has become an even more familiar sight in the Downtown Eastside during the past few weeks as police officers reassigned from community policing to a crackdown on the drug trade have flooded the neighbourhood. “The first day was just mental. It was cops on horses, cops on motorbikes, cops in cars, cops on foot everywhere. You couldn’t spit without hitting a cop,” said Jill Chettier, a 24-year-old resident of the Downtown Eastside. “They were ticketing people for jaywalking or not wearing a helmet — silly things. That’s a strategy too because you ticket people for those things and eventually what happens is they end up with a warrant because they’re poor and they can’t pay the goddamn ticket.” Since the latest police crackdown began on April 7, Chettier, who works for the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users and studies arts and culture at Simon Fraser University, has been participating in “witness shifts” organised by community activists to “police the police.” Every night, Chettier and other observers walk the streets, tail police officers, and document their activities. We joined her for a shift late one night last month. “What has been happening with this heavy duty enforcement is that people are pushed into conditions that aren’t healthy for them,” Chettier said. “They’re pushed further into back alleys, further into their hotel rooms, further into unsafe situations
Community activists patrol the streets, keeping their eyes on the police
— and in those situations they’re more likely to become sick.” As we walked towards the intersection of Main and Hastings streets, Chettier pointed out a man who was recently arrested because his probation conditions prohibit him from being in the Downtown Eastside. Chettier called his circumstances common as well as unconstitutional. “It’s an excuse to eventually arrest and incarcerate people, because people end up out here,” she said as we passed by an unmarked police car idling in an alley. “They’ve got nowhere else to go, they don’t live anywhere, they’re drug addicted, they’re poor. All they know is how to hustle on these blocks. When they get out of jail, just around the corner, where are they going to go? They end up down here, where they’re not supposed to be. Then they’re in breach, which is probably a bigger offence than what they went into jail for in the first place.” Chettier always begins her witness shifts by walking towards Main and Hastings from the drop-in centre at 327 Carrall Street, where she volunteers to get a sense of the police presence in the neighbourhood that night. A stroll down several nearby alleys and streets typically follows. “If I find police, I stay back about 20 feet or so and follow them and watch them and just observe as they jack people up and what have you,” Chettier said as we shadowed three police officers patrolling an alley reeking of urine behind the Carnegie Community Centre. Observers encourage victims of police
brutality and harassment to submit affidavits to document their experiences. They also distribute cards produced by the Pivot Legal Society to inform residents of the rights they possess when dealing with the police. “Somebody goes back here to get a toke, and they get their pipe broken and they have to show their tattoos,” Chettier said. “People are subjected to strip searches indiscriminately. People are subjected to having to lie face down in the pouring rain or in the Main and Hastings public washroom. “People are being targeted because they’re drug addicted and they’re poor,” she added. As we stood outside 327 Carrall, a woman approached us and asked, “Anybody got needles?” Chettier directed her inside the drop-in centre, which was established as an unauthorised safe injection site last month. Supporters awaiting the opening of a government-funded safe injection site conceived of 327 Carrall — which is open every night from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. and is staffed by a registered nurse — as an interim measure. “Supposedly, around this time we were supposed to have a safe injection site,” Chettier said. “Where the fuck is the safe injection site? It’s being wrapped and buried in red tape in Ottawa and the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and city of Vancouver aren’t doing fuck all about it.” Walking through the piss soaked alley behind the Carnegie Centre again, two big
rats cross our paths. With several police officers lingering on Hastings, there were more people in the alley than before. “This crackdown is displacing people,” Chettier said. “It’s not getting them off the drugs. It’s not doing anything about any problems they may have had in their lives.” Near Hastings and Columbia, one resident told us he was sympathetic with the actions of police officers in the neighbourhood. “They do have a tendency to get out of hand,” said Craig, 33 years old. “But it all depends on your attitude. You come off hostile and being a jerk and stuff, they’re going to do their job. They’re doing their job, same as everyone else.” “There’s a lot of them that over-enforce the law,” added 31-year-old Rob, a resident of the Downtown Eastside for the past 10 years. As we strolled down Blood Alley, Chettier said she was highly critical of the city for pushing the enforcement element of their Four Pillars approach to the Downtown Eastside’s drug problems, while progress on the plan’s treatment, prevention, and harm reduction components have lagged behind. “The analogy that everyone’s been talking around about it is three toothpicks and one baton used to beat people who are poor and drug addicted,’” Chettier said. For now, Chettier and other observers will continue to walk the streets of the Downtown Eastside nightly, watching out for the safety of neighbourhood residents, who they say are “under siege” from police.