Transcript
Speaker: I'm Jane Williams, this is the Red Eye Podcast. You can hear our live broadcast on Saturday mornings from 10 till noon at 100 .5 FM in the Lower Mainland. Today, Lorain Chisholm talks with Manakshi Mano of Pivot Legal about the Vancouver Police Department's new trespass prevention program.
Speaker: In yet another Vancouver Police Department project that targets marginalized people, police officers can remove people if they have allegedly violated the Provincial Trespass Act. The VPD's Trespass Prevention Program authorized them to do this even if there isn't a call to 911. A coalition of Indigenous, women's, Downtown Eastside, and legal organizations are voicing their opposition to this new attack on the poor and homeless.
Speaker: I'm joined by Minakshi Minow. She is criminalization and policing campaigner at Pivot Legal Society. Hello, Minakshi. Hi, Lorraine, and such a pleasure to be on Red Eye. Thank you. Oh, well, it's great to talk to you. Give us a sketch of what this program mandates police officers to do in relation to private property.
Speaker: So this is a program that was very quietly announced by the VPD last October. It's called the TrustPass Prevention Program, and essentially it invites private businesses or landlords to
Speaker: Contact the VPD, sign up for this service where they would be, I guess, made part of a directory. I'm not quite sure how it works internally, but externally, it's like they're on a directory. They have a decal.
Speaker: that says something like trespass prevention program in effect. And so it would allow police to attend whether it's a stoop or an awning or any part of someone's quote, private property and displaced people who were using that space. And as you mentioned, this is done without a call to 911. This is effectively just allowing police to kind of walk down the street
Speaker: see what businesses have the sticker in the window or on their door and arbitrarily kick people out. What does that look like on the ground to people who rely on public space in a neighborhood like the Downtown Eastside or in my neighborhood of Vancouver East?
Speaker: Great question. So, you know, right now we're in the midst of a pandemic. We're actually in the midst of two, but one of them calls for public health guidelines like social distancing, restricted access to indoor space, reduced capacity of indoor space. So a lot of people who are experiencing homelessness or maybe live in places where they can't have guests are finding shelter in
Speaker: doorways, awnings, places where they can be out of the cold, out of the rain, out of the elements. And so by design, this program sets out to just displace them on the street. Who gets targeted in this and basically treated like criminals in this program?
Speaker: Well, it's very obviously targeting homeless people, right? I'm sure that you or I could step under an awning for a minute, pull out our phone, look up directions, take a call, maybe chat with a friend, and we're not going to get shuffled along. This program and, you know, many of these other programs that are designed to diminish loitering or people on the street are really targeted at homeless folks, particularly
Speaker: poor folks who are sheltering on sidewalks, people who may be using illicit substances. And we know statistically that that also means that these programs target indigenous folks who are overrepresented in homeless counts. What effect does it have on people who are constantly the subject of police attention?
Speaker: And it's often unwarranted and unwanted attention too, right? So people are forced to kind of live in constant fear of being displaced, of being shuffled along, basically told, well, you know, you can't be here, you also can't be there, you really can't be anywhere.
Speaker: You know, it really creates this kind of internal crisis of survival, right, where you don't know where you're going to be able to set up for a little bit of time, where you don't know whether you're going to be arbitrarily displaced. And this has been an area of concern for pivot for many years. In 2018, two researchers at pivot
Speaker: released a report called Project Inclusion that looked at the totality of anti -homeless and anti -drug user stigma. And programs like the trespass prevention program are a clear manifestation of that kind of stigma. It's a tool that's really being used to root out, quote, undesirable elements of a neighborhood.
Speaker: Understand that the Office of the Police Complaints Commissioner has already called out this kind of behavior as a conflict of interest. Tell us about that.
Speaker: So this is something that a staff lawyer at the BC Civil Liberties Association, Megan McDermott, spoke to. Programs like the trespass prevention program expand police's jurisdiction to displace, arrest, or gather information about people. Megan points out that the police department is entering into private agreements. And this is an overbroad and arbitrary use of provincial legislation that's really not
Speaker: reflective of what the spirit of that legislation was. But of course, you know, living in BC, we know that this entire province is a trespass on unceded and sovereign indigenous territory. Now, this isn't the first initiative we've seen recently targeting this group of community members from the VPD.
Speaker: That's right. So in November Pivot, as well as the Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society and the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users submitted a joint complaint to the police board regarding another program that was really designed to target poor people in our neighborhoods. And that was the neighborhood response team. And the role of that team was essentially to mandate police to attend non -criminal calls.
Speaker: or calls that they had previously deemed low priority. And again, they quite often point to undesirable people who are sheltering in front of your business, people who are using substances in public. And it's very clear that like poor folks and substance users have become the scapegoat of the VPD.
Speaker: On one hand, we hear that the police are seeking to criminalize them through the use of the programs we've been talking about. But then on the other hand, when it serves the DPD, they're going to talk about their mental health strategy, their non enforcement of drug laws. And so it seems that like in this moment when there's a very big and urgent conversation about defunding the police, people who experience homelessness or people who use illicit substances are really just used as political pawns.
Speaker: That's where I was going next. Many, many people are calling for less policing and defunding police to spend those public dollars on community -led programs. What does this kind of program do to the efforts to create more just and useful either policing or community outreach? I think it highlights a really concerning pattern of local police forces where they've basically decided that they don't need to
Speaker: listen to or even consider broader
Speaker: municipal advocacy, right? Because we happen to have a city council that unanimously endorsed a motion decriminalizing poverty, really calling for community -led alternatives to policing. But in the wake of that, we've seen now multiple programs that are really designed to criminalize poverty. So I think there's a lot of broader questions that emerge, like what is the role of the Vancouver Police Board
Speaker: How do we actually advocate with these public bodies that seem increasingly immune to social justice movements? I think it's heartbreaking to see these initiatives which, you know, alienate and make even less welcome members of our community who happen to be homeless, who need public spaces. What fundamental changes do you think we need to make to our
Speaker: way of framing or looking at these fellow community members? Well, I think even that perspective is essential, Lorraine, like really looking at unhoused, unsheltered people as members of our community, as our neighbors, and not desirable elements who come from somewhere else.
Speaker: and occupy our precious parks or streets. We really need to understand that we live in a city that's marked by systemic racism, including the dispossession of Indigenous people from their territory. We know that people who are experiencing poverty aren't going to find rentals at shelter rates or pension rates. There's a crisis in affordable housing, and particularly
Speaker: in housing for people who rely on government subsidies or government programs.
Speaker: So I think that we also need to be able to extend a little bit of kindness on a basic level when you see someone who is sheltering under an awning rather than make an easy assumption about who they are that's based on stigma and prejudice. Consider why someone is living under an awning in a, quote, world -class city. And I think, of course, when I'm
Speaker: thinking about this issue, like I know that it was something that's come up everywhere, right? I know it came up at Co -op Radio when we returned to Columbia Street a couple years ago. And at that time,
Speaker: I remember we held an AGM and we were very fortunate to be joined by Councillor Jean Swanson. And she said something about that stoop that really stuck with me. And that was a time when a lot of programmers and members of the station were really struggling, right? Because when folks are taking shelter on the stoop, it means you have
Speaker: reduced access to the doors. It might mean that you're like struggling to open the door if you're carrying stuff in. You might just feel uncomfortable and that's an okay and legitimate feeling, but I remember Jean Swanson saying every elected politician should have to walk through that doorway.
Speaker: every minister should have to walk through that doorway because when we're thinking about why people are unsheltered, why they're sheltering in doorways, why they're taking up space under awnings, like these are really systemic issues. And when police adopt this lens of like, well, they're trespassing and we should be able to move them along, it really individualizes what is a fundamentally systematic issue.
Speaker: And how do you think, what are some of the things that we can do to take action and push for fundamental change in the way people are taken care of and also how they are over policed in this way?
Speaker: That's a big question. Yeah, it's a big question, but you know, it's time to ask these big questions. I think that folks who want to take action can engage with their municipal and provincial and federal elected officials and make it clear to them that policing is not a priority, especially when we know that policing programs target
Speaker: black and indigenous people they target racialized folks they target people who have mental health crises they target people who are poor is that really where we want to be spending not only hundreds thousands millions but actually billions of dollars.
Speaker: I think that we also need to look at how we can take up like mutual aid programs in our own communities, right? Because we can do all the yelling and advocacy with the provincial, federal, and municipal governments that we want, but we also need to like create our own relationships as an alternative to the police, right? How do we make our communities stronger? For some folks, that might mean developing relationships with the host nations on whose territory they reside,
Speaker: It might mean participating in supply drives for local tent cities. It might mean being the person on the block who steps out of your building when you hear something funny happening on the street and you just have a direct conversation with the folks involved. I mean, you know, all of those things involve us going out on a bit of a limb. But when you look at the alternative, which is
Speaker: stigma, criminalization, and of course, the potential for fatal involvement with police. I think we can all try to grow and learn a bit together. Well, it's been really great talking with you today, and it's really nice to talk to you again. Thank you so much, Lorraine, and it's like a real pleasure and honor to be invited to be on the Red Eye podcast. Thanks so much.
Speaker: I've been speaking with Manakshi Manoj. She is criminalization and policing campaigner at Pivot Legal Society. The Red Eye podcast is produced at the studios of Vancouver Co -op Radio. You can support us by supporting Co -op Radio. Go to coopradio .org and click on the donate button. Independent media relies on the support of people like you.
