Police Discretion in Vancouver's DTES

Discretional Policing of an Impoverished Region
By: Oliver paron
Submitted to: Dr. Parnaby
Date: November 13, 2014
Student ID: 0809125

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Introduction
Police are part of a social institution designed to serve and maintain law and order and
ensure the safety of the Canadian public. Another important role for the police in society is to
work alongside and on behalf of the communities they work to serve. Police are provided the
burden of shouldering a crucial responsibility to exercise discretion when exercising their power
and authority towards public deviants. The Canadian legal framework towards policing poverty
is often strict, providing the downtown eastside (DTES) of Vancouver, BC to be an exceptional
case for the use of police discretion (Cunningham 2003, 230-35). This paper will examine the
novel circumstances of Vancouver’s DTES community and Vancouver Police Departments
(VPD) discretion towards poverty-ridden social issues, such as homelessness, mental illness and
drug addiction. The research question this paper will present is how useful and beneficial is the
discretional policing within the DTES of Vancouver? An area flourished by poverty.
The methods the Police of DTES choose to pursue on to their community is a very unique
and compassionate way of going about policing, the outcome of such a system leads to safety
and security within a very irregular deviant population and tackles the issue of crime towards
targeted groups in a completely innovative and effective fashion (Nation Film Board of Canada
1999). Other police departments in parts of Canada such as Montréal do not use the same
discretion as the VPD. The differing ways of policing these groups of people will be compared
and contrasted to genuinely emphasize the beneficial aspects of using the discretion the VPD do
to ensure the health and safety of their community.
Police Discretion
One of many duties of a police officer is to assess situations presented to them in society
and act according to the urgency and degree of crime that is being committed (Thomas 1982,

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145). This is also known as using discretional policing and is a very efficient way of avoiding
unnecessary charges and prosecutions for people who don’t deserve such punishment. The
officer involved uses his judgmental abilities to weigh the consequences and decide whether or
not to fully enforce the law on the individual.
Other circumstances where the police use discretion and where it is most relatable to the
VPD in DTES Vancouver is when police try to work with the offenders to try to help them
become better people and stop committing offences. The film “Through a Blue Lens”
demonstrates how the VPD use their discretional capabilities to effectively and positively help
the groups living in poverty in the DTES (Nation Film Board of Canada 1999). A police officer
makes a comment on his experience policing the area and explains how he came out of the
academy ‘hard’ and ready to fight crime but after warming up and familiarizing himself with the
community, he was to ‘police’ and ‘soften up’ (National Film Board of Canada 1999). This in
other words expresses how the VPD feel toward their community they are partnered with to help
secure safety and decrease crime. They do not charge homeless people, the mentally ill, or drug
addicts but rather they use discretion when confronting them and create relationships with them
that hold respect and together they work at bettering there choices and avoid the dangers of
repeated crime or even more serious crime that may occur.
Police discretion is unique in that there is no set in stone way of executing an objective
use of it universally. It depends on the police departments take on it and ultimately it is up to the
officer on duty to make the final call. The discretion the VPD use is far different from the
discretion that is used else where in Canada, for example Montréal, with aspects such as
Vancouver’s police initiatives and policies that make it distinctive and inimitable; other parts of

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Canada do not have the same successfully altered degree of policing put in place (Sylvestre
2010, 435; Charette et al 2006, 86).
Case Study: Vancouver’s DTES
The ten-block neighbourhood of the DTES is well-acclaimed in academic and grey
literature as Canada’s “poorest postal code,” home to nearly 18 000 residents within the
neighbourhoods of Chinatown, Gastown, Industrial Area, Oppenheimer, Strathcona, Thornton
Park and Victory Square (City of Vancouver 2012a, 2). Common socioeconomic characteristics
of the DTES are prevalent and widespread homelessness, drug use, marginalization from
mainstream society and perpetual poverty, often the main concern for police presence and
enforcement in the area (Linden et al 2012, 559-60).
The VPD are unique in enforcing the principles of the City’s Four Pillars drug strategy,
prevention, treatment, harm reduction and enforcement (City of Vancouver 2012b). Unmatched
across the country, this police force employs discretion in their execution of law enforcement in
necessary and important ways for maintaining law and order and ensuring a sense of security and
hope for vulnerable groups in the DTES.
The VPD implemented an initiative known as the Citywide Enforcement Team (CET)
that is used in the DTES to crack down on crimes - by using the discretional method - that arouse
from the homeless, drug addicts and mentally ill people (Charette et al 2006, 85). An institution
was put in place called the supervised injection facilities (SIF) and named the program ‘Insite’
(Linden et al 2012, 561). This program allowed for safe drug use and to avoid contracting
diseases and dangerous and risky situations.
Homelessness, a targeted group that the incentives are aimed at accommodating, is seen
by the VPD as people who need help with places to sleep, eat and live reasonable decent lives

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and the VPD are their to provide useful counsel in the streets on the daily (Charette et al 2006,
88). Increased police presence encourages the homeless to push to find places off the streets and
out of alleyways to avoid contact and have more private places to use drugs (Charette et al 2006,
88).
The mentally ill present in the DTES are another very highly targeted group for
consideration. They account for 49% of all 911 emergency calls made from 2008-2011 in the
DTES according to the VPD reports (Linden et al 2012, 62). Most homelessness is due to the
person being mentally ill or unable to cope with reality and therefore the police use respectful
discretion towards these people in their attempt at rehabilitating them (Linden et al 2012, 65).
Drug addicts and drug use is also a very prominent problem in the DTES police have
taken most seriously and have drawn the most measures towards (Linden et al 2012, 61).
Examples reinforcing this iteration can be the four pillars drug strategy put into effect, and the
institutions that rose in its wake (CET and SIF) (Linden et al 2012, 61-62).
These three groups of public deviants that have conjured into the streets of DTES
Vancouver have called for the methods of policing in the area to adjust accordingly and apply the
proper use of policing in order to fight the issue in the most responsible and beneficially effective
way possible.
Discretion and Homelessness
The English Oxford Dictionary (OED) explains “homelessness” as having “no home or
permanent abode (1989). The problem of homelessness in the DTES is alarming and the
programs and policing that have been put in place to help the issue are very necessary. Close to
700 of the 18,000 people in DTES Vancouver are homeless, without a place to sleep, not even a

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room to them selves (Pedersen and Swanson 2009, 7-8). Another 3,700 live in privately owned
rooms with a bathroom down the hall and no kitchen (Pedersen and Swanson 2009, 7-8).
The film ‘Through a Blue Lens’ looks at issues involving homeless individuals and their
struggle trying to live in the DTES. Police officers use their discretion when confronting them
on the daily to see if they are okay and if they need help. A scene in the movie portrays an
officer’s visit to a familiar homeless person sleeping in her tent on the sidewalk. The interaction
goes as if the officer was checking up on a patient in a hospital, observing the state she was in
and proposing daily tasks or activities that could keep them out of trouble with the law (Nation
Film Board of Canada 1999).
This method of communicating with the homeless the VPD use and not entirely enforcing
the law upon them or neglecting them all together is an approach to discretional policing that is
very necessary for this community. The way these people are treated and handled by police
allow them to feel comfortable or at ease with their already miserable life and encourages them
to not commit crimes by reassuring them that they are on their side.
The term the officer used in the film, ‘gone soft’ refers to his feelings towards these
people living out on the street as he builds personal relationships with them, even if they are
“criminals” - from other deviance they get themselves into on the street (Nation Film Board of
Canada 1999). He explains how there is much more to policing then simply and mindlessly
enforcing the law onto vulnerable people; the issue at hand will not be solved. It is better to get
down to their level and work with the community for the community.
The homeless are people with little to no personal belongings or purpose in life and if
they were to be prosecuted and put in jail for there criminal behaviour, in the end they will wind

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up right back to where they started when they are released back into the public. Police assistance
in the DTES is an alternative that utilizes discretion when enforcing the law onto the homeless.
When comparing this policing method of the homeless with the city of Montréal it is
identified how the two techniques are very diverse from one another. Montréal has had many
complaints from its citizens about the homeless harassing, loitering, urinating and being
intoxicated in public (Sylvestre 2010, 435). They responded by using a harsh kind of discretion
that would steer them away from the cities streets (Sylvestre 2010, 435). This would involve
fines, arrests, removals, incarcerations and more (Sylvestre 2010, 435). Montréal police choose
to deal with their homeless without remorse or counsel like the VPD do. The discretion the VPD
use is a form of policing that works with the offender to rehabilitate them and prevent further
harm to themselves or to society.
Discretion and Mental Illness
To be mentally ill is to have “a condition which causes serious disorder in a person’s
behaviour or thinking” (Oxford English Dictionary 1989). The DTES of Vancouver is home to
thousands of people living with a mental disorder (Linden et al 2012, 565). Most of these people
fall into the low-income bracket within the city or are homeless, struggling to get through each
day (Linden et al 2012, 565). The mentally ill create problems out on the street that are
unpredictable and dangerous by behaving in ways influenced by delusions or hallucinations,
moreover they can be a threat to themselves and to others by being violent or suicidal (Pendersen
2007, 643).
Police use the utmost discretion when dealing with these kinds of people; they know they
are mentally unstable and they know to use respectful means of communicating with them
(Nation Film Board of Canada 1999). The people that the VPD encounter on the streets in DTES

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more or less have some degree of mental illness whether they are homeless or drug addicts and
the discretional policing used towards them allows for the police to work with them and try to
gear them in the right direction (Nation Film Board of Canada 1999).
The way police use their discretion towards the mentally ill is very similar to how the
homeless in the DTES are treated. Lots of daily interactions on the streets including asking how
they are doing, where they have been and what they have been up to since they last bumped into
one another (Nation Film Board of Canada 1999). Police counselling and advising concerning
these people look at the issue in a social context; attempting to help the person even if they are a
‘criminal’ by doing drugs or committing public indecencies, but do not deserve criminal
prosecution (Nation Film Board of Canada 1999).
Mentally ill people account for just under half (49%) of all emergency 911 calls in the
DTES (Linden et al 2012, 559-60). The VPD treat the situations with discretional decisions,
measuring out the harm that is being done to the community and to that person, and then making
good judgement with the amount of law that needs to be enforced or the use of socialization
which would lead them back to a more normal state (Nation Film Board of Canada 1999).
Policing mentally ill people is no easy task and involves a very high degree of toleration
for sometimes incoherent, inappropriately acting and suicidal people (Pendersen 2007, 643). For
the police to be involved, the mentally ill person would have to be committing some sort of
offence such as crimes associated with homelessness. These crimes can include public urination,
intoxication or overdose, but instead of arresting or fining the person, the VPD would take the
necessary steps in assuring that persons safety and security within the community (Nation Film
Board of Canada 1999).

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The way in which mentally ill people are policed is very similar in other parts of Canada
as it is in the DTES of Vancouver but it would seem that the reasoning for policing this way in
each city are not the same (Billette, Crocker and Charette 2011, 678). The VPD police mentally
ill people using the discretion they do because the citywide initiative is to combat the homeless
and drug addiction within the city (Nation Film Board of Canada 1999). This is done by
objectively taking these people to hospitals or taking part in interventions with them as the first
priority instead of making arrests and sending them through the legal system (Nation Film Board
of Canada 1999). Montréal, on the other hand, has research found about policing mentally ill
people that portrays quantitative data supporting that the main reasoning the police did not make
an arrest was due to long drawn out processes of paperwork, or the realization that bringing them
to a hospital might be a challenging task (Billette, Crocker and Charette 2011, 678). A very
popular route they take is to informally dispose of the issue by letting them ‘walk’ with
consideration that the issue being dealt with is usually not at high risk (Billette, Crocker and
Charette 2011, 678). This is legitimate in the city because the mentally ill receive special
treatment from the police that involves overseeing their criminal actions using proper discretion
because of their biological wiring (Billette, Charette and Crocker 2011, 678). Similarly to
Vancouver, although, if the use of violent behaviour, drugs or alcohol is involved or if there is an
offence reported by a citizen the possibility for arrest is increased (Billette, Charette and Crocker
2011, 678). This is a fact for reasons concerning over exaggerative public disturbance where
treating the issue as a social issue no longer is enough to get through to the offender.
Mental illness is very commonly found in the homeless population of the DTES of
Vancouver and it is associated, but not limited to, Vancouver’s biggest and most sought after
public issue; drug use and addiction.

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Discretion and Drug Use and Addiction
Drug use and addiction has been a problem in the DTES for many years and has not been
taken lightly by the VPD. The cities drug problem is the most heavily burdened by illicit drug
use in Canada (Charette et al 2006, 86). The DTES is home to one of the largest open drug
market in North America and to combat the issue many different social institutions and
initiatives have been put in place to work with the addicts (Charette et al 2006, 86). The city
became notorious for its drug problem in 1997 when 18% of injection drug users (IDU) observed
to have HIV (Charette et al 2006, 86).
Needle exchange programs (NEP) and SIF where users can go to get sterile syringes and
to inject drugs safely are a couple of the initiatives introduced as a result of the CET (Charette et
al 2006, 86). The city also adopted the “Four Pillar” drug strategy, which emphasizes the equal
importance of prevention, treatment, enforcement, and harm reduction (Charette et al 2006, 86).
All of these programs and initiatives were put in place to purpose the use of police discretion
when encountering these people.
Through a blue lens documents the policing of these drug addicts in the DTES and
depicts the discretional use of carefulness and caution as well as respect of the drug addicts as
they both try at working together to help lower the problem (Nation Film Board of Canada
1999). The VPD’s use of street level communication with the addicts allows for a much more
informal and comfortable interaction that can assure them they are not being arrested or fined,
but counselled (Nation Film Board of Canada 1999).
One regular daily walks through the streets and alley ways, drug addicts and found
everywhere, in nooks and cracks of buildings, either with drugs like heroin or cocaine and in

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worse situations they would find people overdosing (Anis et al 2003, 165; Nation Film Board of
Canada 1999). In the cases where they would find drugs on the person they would ask them to
dispose of it and move on, these kinds of interactions occur on numerous occasions everyday in
the DTES (Nation Film Board of Canada 1999). As for public over dosing, this reached an all
time high of once per day in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s in the DTES (Nation Film Board of
Canada 1999). Police would act calmly and accordingly when confronting these situations,
having called ambulances in advance and staying around the entire time until the user is back in
a normal state. Once the addict is sober, police talk with them and discuss what has happened
and what can be done about it, perhaps encouraging them to get involved in the many
rehabilitation centres surrounding the area.
The same discretion is used towards addicts who experience cocaine psychosis in the
middle of the streets, causing a scene that would seem as if they were having a seizure and acting
extremely paranoid, but was just the influence of injecting cocaine (Nation Film Board of
Canada 1999). The police see these problems not as criminal offences but as sick people in need
of help, and that is what they are there to do.
Drug addiction is not unique only in the DTES of Vancouver but it is of the highest
proportion compared with Toronto and Montréal with Toronto averaging 10,000-15,000
injection drug users and Vancouver and Montréal at about the same with 12,000 each (Macqueen
2003, 46). Toronto, with the greatest population density, has the greatest number of addicts,
except they do not choose to accommodate the issue as Vancouver has done in the DTES
because the issue is not as similar as that in the DTES, it would involve a different strategy
(Macqueen 2003, 46). Police in the busy streets of Toronto cannot afford to apply the same

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discretion the DTES receives from the VPD, too much time is required, it is much more efficient
to enforce the law on to these individuals (Macqueen 2003, 46).
Montréal, as it is very similarly populated with drug addicts as Vancouver is in the
DTES, is attempting to remedy Vancouver’s actions made regarding assisting drug addictions
and health and safety precautions of the users (Macqueen 2003, 46). Montréal is much more
attributable in relaying Vancouver’s initiatives for reasons such as they have comparable drug
user populations and analogous city functions that operate similarly to Vancouver’s (Macqueen
2003, 46).
Vancouver has been the initiator of such incredible discretional policing that has both
helped the city start to get back on its feet and influenced other cities around Canada to do the
same. Drug addiction is not something to be taken lightly by the community it is going on in and
the methods the VPD have in place are doing exactly what the community wants them to do
which is to secure safety in a healthy communal environment.
Conclusion
The DTES was and still is home to many homeless, mentally ill, and drug addicts that
conjugate together to live a life of struggles and disappointment. The issue is being well handled
by the VPD by working with the many initiative put in place such as the Citywide Enforcement
Team, The Four Pillar drug strategy, Supervised Injection Facilities, and Needle Exchange
Programs only to name a few.
Policing the impoverished state the DTES is no easy task for the VPD, but they have
learned through many years of being out in the streets how to best handle the circumstances.
They have learned that simply enforcing the law onto these people like the police academy has
taught them to do is not the answer in these situations. The more successful solution in the DTES

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is getting down to their level and communicating with them respectfully and building
constructive relationships that will encourage rehabilitation and help those people get better.
Other parts of Canada cannot seem to handle their issues with policing homelessness, the
mentally ill, and drug addicts quite as well as the DTES has been for over the past fifteen years.
This is because Vancouver’s DTES is significantly more populated by these people considering
the overall population of the area but it shouldn’t mean that other parts of Canada cant have the
same success this part of Vancouver receives from its policing.
The VPD has done wonders for its DTES at times where it was frightening to live with
averages of at least one over dose a day and on going public indecencies that made the beautiful
city of Vancouver occupy the slummiest part of Canada. The strategies implemented and
discretional policing are continuing to produce success stories from the area as the problem with
poverty has decreased from its highest state (Nation Film Board of Canada 1999).

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