49 replies to this topic

[VicHockeyFan]

For the first time ever I saw cops moving out a group that was sleeping on the steps of the Chinese church on N. Park St.

[aastra]

That's a hell of a letter. So is Bill Naughton new to Victoria? Does he not realize that Cormorant Street was a perfectly normal street up until just a few years ago?

[Caramia]

I don't see anything wrong with Naughton's terminology. If we don't want police to think like social workers we need to stop employing them to act like it. People who are mentally ill, suicidal and addicted are foisted off on police to take care of in an urban setting because we can't get it together enough to put them in a hospital/care setting. Police waste their time moving these people from spot to spot knowing full well there is no where to take them that they ARE allowed to be. The jails don't keep them, and there is no supportive housing or treatment that will either.

Given those circumstances we are lucky to have police who try to think like social workers, because that's what they are being asked to be.

[Mike K.]

TC, March 09:

Mayor should build safe smoking sites
When smoking in any public area becomes illegal, Mayor Alan Lowe should consider building safe smoking sites. Please don’t build these sites next to the safe injection sites; we wouldn’t want to offend the clients with second-hand smoke.

These sites can be funded by the taxes that will be levied on everything from food to breathing.

And while our police are busy enforcing the new no-smoking laws, our drug dealers will be making money and local retailers will have gone out of business because they could no longer display cigarettes. Doug Allewell,

Victoria.

[Ms. B. Havin]

...we are lucky to have police who try to think like social workers, because that's what they are being asked to be.

I think it's important to differentiate. The original article ([url=http://vicnews.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=36&cat=23&id=844097&more=1:f75a0]AIDS group plans move[/url:f75a0]) was about the needle exchange, which, according to numerous reports, is plagued by a "tribe-like" group of what most people would call criminals: they're openly doing drugs, they're destroying other people's private property, and they're crapping (figuratively & literally) over everything that area residents & business owners hold dear.

I don't think the letter writer advocates a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAVAK:f75a0]SAVAK[/url:f75a0]-style police force for Victoria, where people have to be in fear of being brutalized by the police. Yes, it's ok that the police have a handle on social justice issues -- goody for them. But do we really want to institutionalize that role? Why have a police at all then? Why not just have social workers? What are police for, if not to keep citizen safe? And are they keeping them safe from street-and-sidewalk-shitting, private-yard-trashing, shooting-up-in-public in-your-face ...what?, nice kids?, protesters?, delinquents?, addicts?, assholes? I mean, what do we call them? Tribal?

Every time the homelessness issue comes up, everyone and their auntie Jane (plus the family pet) gets thrown into the pot. It drives me up the wall. The homeless are not a family. IMO, even family shouldn't necessarily be family. One of the most acutely accurate bumper stickers I ever saw was "I can't relate to my relatives." It sums up the fact that you and X don't have something deeply or essentially in common just because both of you are linked by Y. Just because you and X share a grandparent, that doesn't mean that you "naturally" relate to X. Likewise, if you and X are both homeless, it doesn't follow that your situations have anything in common. Yet somehow, when it comes to social classes or social pathologies or social conditions (like homelessness), we're supposed to suspend all powers of discrimination and think of you and X as somehow ..."family," as though there's some "essential" similarity. Yuck. Ok, the religious believe it's all family, but that's they're problem -- and thankfully, they do not run the show: we still have separation of church and state (I hope). I believe in bumper stickers, and praise the enlightenment every day of my life that I live in a civil, not a tribal society. Please: differentiate the homeless from the homeless. The druggies from the druggies. And defend civil society. Like family, tribalism isn't what romantics crack it up to be.

There are not-so-bad-druggies, and then there are real bad asses.

Let's figure out affordable housing, let's have social workers for people in need, and please let's have safety nets and welfare. But let's have police for criminals. Why talk about non-criminals (the folks described by Naughton as causing "the increasing gentrification of downtown") as though they were a plague on a par with drug addicts roaming the street?

[Caramia]

I think often police get blamed for being too lax when people don't realise that they are not being given the tools to actually resolve the issue.

It is a sorry state of affairs where serious jail time is neither likely, nor, when it does happen, reformative or permanent. Where police resources are funneled towards endlessly shifting a group of mentally ill and addicted people around the city. For police must be very frustrating.

The healthcare system and judiciary need to step up. When police encounter people who belong in jail, they should be able to put them there. When they encounter people who need to be in the hospital the health system should be able ready to step in. Until that essential backup is there police will be stuck chasing their client base around downtown redundantly.


It reminds me of that cartoon with Sam Sheepdog and Ralph the Wolf.

[Ms. B. Havin]

^ @Caramia: I completely agree with you, especially re. healthcare system & judiciary having to step up. And "normal" people (or whatever we want to call them) have to be able to voice their expectations, as well as get responses. I sometimes get the impression that people have become fatalistic, and think that criticism or complaint is useless because nothing changes. That's bad. Or they worry that any complaint or criticism is seen as nihilistic, as not "supportive" of the "community," so they either shut-up/ tune-out, or become fringe wingnuts, which also deepens the civic democracy deficit. Oh well, that's a whole 'nother can of worms though!

[VicHockeyFan]

Needle exchange proves a tough sell
Public opposition stymies search for new site, but city eases zoning issues
Carolyn Heiman, Times Colonist
Published: Friday, April 06, 2007
A new location for the controversial Victoria needle exchange still hasn't been nailed down, says the man trying to help AIDS Vancouver Island with finding a new site.

Keyvan Shojania said yesterday that locating a place has been "tougher than I thought," and while he has narrowed down some possible locations, he declined to name them for fear it would generate public opposition.

Members of a group calling itself the Rock Bay Business Coalition have joined together to resist relocation of the needle exchange in that area.


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Keyvan Shojania

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Font: ****John Hopper, who is also associated with the Rock Bay Ratepayers Association, said he hopes the group will be asked before any exchange is moved there.

Shojania said the city has told him the only zoning they will consider for a needle exchange is called M2-I. There are about 50 sites in Victoria with that zoning, but after eliminating those close to residential buildings, "It cuts down the list by quite a bit." Most of the M2-I zones are in the Rock Bay area, but a few are closer to downtown, said Shojania.

"No one will actually want it in their area," said Shojania, a lawyer and developer. "The question will be how many people or properties are affected and how much are they affected. The area they are in now in has an enormous effect."

The needle exchange is at the corner of Blanshard and Cormorant streets. Over the years, an increase in the number of clients, along with drug addicts shifting to crystal meth from heroin, has fuelled friction between the social agency and its commercial and residential neighbours.

Shojania said the discarded needles left in the area is just one issue: "The place is a magnet for a particularly anti-social type of person." If the needle exchange reduces costly diseases as Vancouver Island Health Authority says it does, then VIHA should be able to provide better funding to the program to minimize impact on neighbours, Shojania said.

Yesterday, city council agreed to call a public hearing on rezoning more properties in the Rock Bay area properties to M2-I. Alison Meyer, city planner, said the changes are to eliminate heavy industrial uses that are no longer appropriate in the neighbourhood. Under the existing zoning, property owners could have blast furnaces, fish packing, and storage of damaged vehicles on site. Those uses won't be allowed under the M2-I zone. Meyer said it did not limit uses such as a needle exchange or safe-injection site.

Coun. Pam Madoff said she's concerned that if the zoning is in place it will preclude council from having a say in where the needle exchange is relocated.

Mayor Alan Lowe said, "Sometimes that is to our benefit." He added the needle exchange "isn't going to take any site." He later said he was unaware of new locations under consideration.

Coun. Charlayne Thornton-Joe said city staff is working to develop a "good-neighbour policy" with the needle exchange that would transfer to any new location. The properties under consideration for M2-I zoning include: 630 Queens Ave., 601-623 Government St., 1950 Government, 530 Chatham St., 1907 Store St., and two-thirds of the block bounded by Discovery, Pembroke and Government streets, and east of Sports Traders at 508 Discovery St.


Hopper said he is unclear why the city is initiating the zoning, as the neighborhood is in the process of developing a new official community plan. He'd like the area to develop into a design district.

"What are they telling us about the evolution for Rock Bay with these rezoning changes?" Hopper asked.

The staff report said the rezoning would place the properties in "a workable interim holding zone" until the ultimate direction for Rock Bay can be decided.

[Rob Randall]

The needle exchange must have adequate funding in order to abide by a good neighbour policy.

It also must incorporate effective programs to help users get off drugs, not just manage their problem.

We can't just shuffle the existing problem elsewhere.

I have heard that the needle exchange often relies on user-helpers to pick up needles in the neighbourhood and that some users leave them lying around and then get paid for going around and picking them back up!

[VicHockeyFan]

CFAX today:


Polls

Do you agree that Victoria should have three so-called "safe injection sites" for intravenous drug users?

Answer Votes %
yes 132 32%
no 278 68%
Total: 410 100%