Advocacy groups gathered in the Downtown Eastside’s Pigeon Park today to announce that changes made in the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) draft business plan are “incredibly superficial.”
According to recent reports, VPD modifications included the removal of provisions to increase the number of tickets as well as the removal of specific targets on street checks.
“It’s to create a perception of change in this neighbourhood—in fact the actual practice is exactly the same,” said Harsha Walia, project coordinator for the The Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre.
“The plan still solely and disproportionately targets the Downtown Eastside with explicit plans to eliminate street vending, to continue with a ticketing campaign, and to increase police presence. These are still street sweeps fuelled by the 2010 Olympics.”
The older version of the VPD business plan pushed police to crack down on street disorder by ticketing minor offences such as loitering and pan-handling and set a quota of four street checks per block for beat enforcement officers.
“I don’t think they would have dared do this in any other neighbourhood,” said Douglas King, lawyer and head of the policing campaign for PIVOT Legal Society.
He said in 2008, roughly 12,000 tickets were distributed to residents of the Downtown Eastside for by-laws and behaviour that usually would not result in fines.
The modifications to the VPD plan were approved this afternoon by the Vancouver Police Board.
Morgan J. Modjeski is a reporter for The Hook.
The Street Vending Scourge
It's clear to everyone the City is intent on cleaning up the streets in time for the Olympic Games next year and it will continue to ticket street vendors, though less aggressively, in its pursuit.
People resort to street vending because they are impoverished. Why isn't the City openly slamming the Provincial Government for keeping income assistance and minimum wage rates so low? Does it fear the prospect of a Liberal victory in May so much that it won't take issue the harm done by keeping these rates so low for so many years? Why not openly criticize those who enact policies that force the destitute to violate unjust by-laws?
How the City can choose to remain in bed with a party led by someone who illegally tore up a valid collective bargaining agreement and wreak havoc on the lives of thousands of unionized hospital employees and their families, someone who was picked up for DUI by police in Hawaii, who tries to pass himself off as environmentally conscious while flying to the Beijing Olympics in a private jet, tampering with our wild rivers, building superhighways, etc., is beyond the understanding of many Vancouverites.
Stop punishing the poor and go after those who have no interest in improving their lives by providing a livable minimum wage and adequate welfare rates.