page_title: Downtown Eastside
section_title: Law enforcement
hierarchical_section_title: Downtown Eastside / Law enforcement
caption_attribution_description: English: A person who is homeless in the company of Vancouver Police Department officers on East Hastings near Main Street, in the downtown eastside area of Vancouver BC Canada.
context_page_description: The Downtown Eastside is a neighbourhood in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The area, one of the city's oldest, is the site of a complex set of social issues including extremely high levels of drug use, homelessness, poverty, crime, mental illness, and prostitution. It is also known for its strong community resilience and history of social activism.
  Around the beginning of the 20th century, the DTES was the political, cultural, and retail centre of the city. Over several decades, the city centre gradually shifted westwards and the DTES became a poor, although relatively stable, neighbourhood. In the 1980s, the area began a rapid decline due to several factors including an influx of hard drugs, the release of mentally ill individuals, policies that pushed prostitution and drug-related activity out of nearby areas, and the cessation of federal funding for social housing. By 1997, an epidemic of HIV infection and drug overdoses in the DTES led to the declaration of a public health emergency.
context_section_description: In comparison to other Canadian cities, the VPD is generally considered to be progressive in dealing with drugs and sex work, emphasizing harm reduction over law enforcement. 
  The VPD engages in the controversial practice known as "carding", or "street checks", in which police stop and question individuals whom they suspect of being involved in criminal or suspicious activity. In Vancouver, 15% of street checks are on Indigenous people who represent just 2% of the general population, and 5% of checks are on Black people who represent less than 1% of the population. Some civil rights groups believe the VPD's practices constitute racial profiling and result in excessive harassment and violence against Indigenous and Black residents.  
  Since the 1980s, the VPD has generally ignored drug use in the DTES, as the sheer volume of users makes it unfeasible to arrest all of them. A large-scale police crackdown on DTES drug users in 2003 made no difference except to displace drug use to adjacent neighbourhoods. To encourage people to call for help when a drug user is overdosing, paramedics rather than police respond to 911 calls about overdose deaths, except in cases where public safety is at risk.
  Nationwide efforts to reduce the supply of drugs through law enforcement have had minimal impact on the easy availability or low prices of illicit drugs in Vancouver. By former mayor Mike Harcourt's estimate, police intercept only 2% of the drugs that enter the city. Vancouver police guidelines on dealing with sex workers emphasize focusing on addressing violence, human trafficking, and involvement of youth or gangs in prostitution, whereas sex involving consenting adults is not an enforcement priority.
  Relations between police and DTES women were strained by police shortcomings that allowed serial killer Robert Pickton to prey on the community for years before he was arrested in 2002; the VPD apologized in 2010 for its failures in apprehending him. In 2003, the Pivot Legal Society filed 50 complaints from DTES residents alleging police misconduct. An investigation by the RCMP, in which several VPD officers and the police chief failed to co-operate, found that 14 of those allegations were substantiated. In 2007, Pivot agreed to withdraw its remaining complaints, following apologies and changes to VPD policies and procedures.
  In 2008, the VPD implemented a crackdown on minor offences, such as illegal vending on sidewalks and jaywalking. The ticketing blitz was stopped after objections from community groups, so that residents with unpaid tickets – particularly women and sex workers – would be less afraid to approach police to report serious safety concerns.
  In 2010, police launched an initiative to combat violence against DTES women, that resulted in the convictions of several violent offenders. However, the level of trust toward police remains low. According to some DTES activists, "gentrification/condos and police brutality", rather than drugs, are the two worst problems in the neighbourhood.
caption: Trust of police in the DTES remains low.
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