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Police 'Trashed' Low Income Hotel, Residents Charge

Going to court over alleged bust-up blitz.

Tom Sandborn 1 Dec 2005TheTyee.ca

Tom Sandborn was born in Alaska and raised in the wilderness by wolves. Later, Jesuits at the University of San Francisco and radical feminists in Vancouver generously gave time and energy to the difficult task of educating and humanizing him. Tom has a formal education, too: a BA from UBC. He has been practicing the dark arts of journalism off and on ever since university, and now also has about five decades of social justice, peace and environmental campaigning under his belt.

Tom's goal is to live up to the classic definition of a journalist's job from H. L. Menken - to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Reporting Beat: Labour and social justice, health policy, and occasionally environmental issues.

What is the most important issue facing British Columbians?: Two key issues face BC residents (and they're both so compelling and complex that Tom refuses to rank them): income equality and environmental degradation. Both desperately need solutions.

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Residents of a Downtown Eastside hotel say that Vancouver firefighters and police conducted a dramatic raid on their rooms on September 14, kicking in doors and holding them in a vacant lot holding pen outdoors for half a day without finding any evidence of the suspected meth lab that inspired the raid.

Two months later, they say the damage done to their rooms is still not fixed and they want the city to do something about it.

Their affidavits, sworn before a Pivot Legal lawyer, include claims they were held prisoner in the open for hours, denied any access to on-site ambulance staff who regularly checked out police and fire personnel who had been inside the Pender and treated rudely by at least some of the city staff involved. One woman was reportedly denied access to a wash room despite the fact she was menstruating, and others report being called "retarded" by a police officer and physically threatened by a firefighter.

Small claims suit

Frustrated by a lack of official response, the residents are taking the city to small claims court with the help of Pivot Legal, a street lawyer project that aims to serve the most marginalized residents of Canada's poorest neighborhood. Pivot counsel Dave Eby told The Tyee that he would be filing a claim in the small claims division of BC Provincial Court, seeking damages from the city that could run as high as $25,000.00 per claimant.

For residents at the Pender Hotel, at 31 West Pender, the strange events of September 14 began late in the morning with firefighters and police constables knocking on doors, subjecting them to brief in-room interrogation and then ordering them out of the hotel and into the vacant lot next door.

According to sworn affidavits made available by Pivot Legal, fire and police personnel told hotel residents that the discovery of a propane tank during a routine safety inspection led to suspicions there might be a crystal meth lab hidden somewhere in the hotel. The discovery led to the hotel being classified as a Level Three Hazard, according to resident affidavits, and to a destructive search of the premises that left doors kicked in and personal effects in disarray.

One firefighter reportedly felt sick during the initial investigation of the hotel, and his discomfort, added to the discovery of the propane tank, inspired the search.

No meth lab

Pivot lawyer Dave Eby says that no evidence of a meth lab was found during the search, and that the firefighter's symptoms turned out to be unrelated to any toxic contamination at the Pender.

The affidavits also say that police officers and the Vancouver Fire Department HazMat team were offered door keys for use in conducting their search, but the keys weren't used because the protective Hazmat suits worn by firefighters searching the hotel had no pockets to hold the keys.

On November 17, this reporter met with one of the Pender Hotel residents who will be included in the Pivot small claims suit. Appearing still angered, suspicious and shaken by the September incidents, he asked that his name not be used in this story.

"They came into my room and started asking a bunch of political questions," the resident told The Tyee. "They wanted to know if I was on assistance, and I didn't think that was any business of theirs. I got held outside all afternoon, and my room door is still trashed. What I want from this case is some satisfaction, some compensation as the judge sees fit and a personal apology for what happened to me. They inspected my life. Once your privacy has been busted, you never get it back."

'Not prepared to comment'

The Tyee made numerous attempts via phone and email to get the city of Vancouver, the Vancouver Police Department and the Fire Department to comment on the allegations about improper behavior at the Pender Hotel on September 14. Neither the city's legal services department nor the media liaison office of the Vancouver Police Department responded, while the only response from the Fire Department was a voicemail message from Captain Rob Jones-Cook indicating that the department was "not prepared to comment on the Pender Hotel situation at this time."

Vancouver writer Tom Sandborn is an occasional contributor to The Tyee.  [Tyee]

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