Groups to launch complaint against police for `discriminatory policing’

VANCOUVER – Two groups representing residents on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside plan to file a complaint with the police board over allegations of discriminatory policing.

Douglas King of the Pivot Legal Society says 95 per cent of the tickets handed out under the city’s street and traffic bylaw during the last four years were issued in the poor neighbourhood that’s home to many drug-addicted residents.

King says the bylaw was originally meant to regulate businesses such as small grocery stores that put fruit carts on the sidewalks but is now being used to target people who sell goods from the sidewalk.

But police say the tickets are not discriminatory and that they hand out tickets where the majority of offences occur.

They say other areas of the city don’t have the same problems involving disorder, sale of stolen property or unsafe food products or drug dealing.

The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users has the same concerns and will be joining Pivot in its complaint to the police board.