Police accused of targeting street venders in Vancouver’s impoverished Downtown Eastside

If you walk through Vancouver's impoverished Downtown Eastside it's not uncommon to see someone squatting on the sidewalk behind a little collection of household items that are for sale.

There might be canned goods, produce, clothing, old videos. Some things have been recovered from dumpsters, others stolen maybe. Street vending seems part of the culture in Canada's poorest postal code where life for those who've hit bottom is a daily struggle.

A group that advocates for the neighbourhood's residents now says it has proof the police are making that life even harder.

The Pivot Legal Society is accusing the Vancouver Police Department of using bylaws against street vending to harass residents just trying to make an extra buck.

Pivot, allied with the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), says data it obtained under access-to-information legislation shows the vast majority of the $250 tickets issued for violating the city's street-vending bylaw from 2008 to 2012 were handed out in the Downtown Eastside, a practice it calls discriminatory.

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“There’s no way to spin that other than the fact that the Vancouver Police Department is enforcing bylaws more heavily in the Downtown Eastside than in other neighbourhoods," Pivot lawyer Douglas King told a news conference, according to the Globe and Mail.

King said Pivot has filed a complaint with the Vancouver Police Board demanding the city force an end to what he said is the department's "proactive policing" policy in the Downtown Eastside, which he defined as looking for violations instead of waiting for a public complaint.

“We believe this is discrimination on the basis of social condition,” he said, according to the Vancouver Sun. “They’re ticketing poor people who can’t pay fines."

Pivot frequently butts heads with the police, having previously accused officers of abusive behaviour toward residents and at the same time of ignoring crimes committed against them. The struggle seems to be growing more pointed as gentrification transforms the neighbourhood.

The wounds opened by police handling of the disappearances of Downtown Eastside women — mostly drug-addicted prostitutes — who died at the hands of Robert Pickton are far from healed. A provincial inquiry concluded last year police had a "systemic bias" when it came to investigating the cases that kept them from discovering a serial killer was preying on these women.

King said that in part is why Downtown Eastside residents, especially women, still distrust the police and "live in constant fear of enforcement and outstanding fines and warrants." Bylaw-infraction tickets are a pretext used to see if people can be arrested for unpaid fines or outstanding warrants, he said.

But the city police are defending their approach to enforcing the street-vending bylaw in the neighbourhood.

“The bottom line is that the majority of the tickets are given out in the Downtown Eastside because that’s where the offences occur,” said Const. Brian Montague, according to the Sun. “We don’t have a street vending problem in any other part of the city.

“Our officers use a great deal of discretion. A ticket is not issued in every case.”

Street vendors create disorder in the Downtown Eastside, he said.

“They’re often selling stolen property, unsafe food products, and it acts as a cover for drug dealing,” he said.

Street vendor Kerry Everard, standing on East Hastings St. with a selection of goods including Dijon mustard, beans and other food items, told the Globe he's been ticketed six times. But he said he's filling a need by providing the community with affordable goods.

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None of the items are stolen; he's a "binner," Everard said.

“It’s kind of like being victimized by [police],” he said. “We’re doing work here. There are people dealing drugs next to me, and people who make a living stealing out of stores, and they don’t get picked [on] as we do.”