Justice for Girls says excessive policing of the Downtown Eastside violates numerous domestic and international human rights laws

April 11, 2003

Downtown Eastside, Vancouver BC, April 11, 2003- The current police campaign in this neighbourhood is a clear violation of numerous domestic and international human rights laws. It is not an exaggeration to say that the residents of the Downtown Eastside are currently living in a police state. How else would one describe the extreme police presence, the mass searches, interrogations, and arbitrary detainments, or the suspension of liberty and mobility rights of the residents in this neighbourhood. We must not fool ourselves into thinking that this campaign is restricted to drug dealers in the neighbourhood, it is a show of police power that absolutely will impact homeless teenage girls.

Justice for Girls believes that this is a very dangerous campaign and one that will only increase the violence, disease, and devastation of the poorest and most marginalized young women in Canada. Policing of homeless teenage girls will only drive those girls into more dangerous and even deadly circumstances. Police campaigns of this nature are familiar to homeless teenage girls in the Downtown Eastside, they have often been subjected to extreme policing. Some of you may be familiar with the "Hard Targeting" policing strategy that was designed to drive youth out of this neighbourhood in the name of cracking down on sexual abuse and exploitation of children. We know from working with these girls that a teenage Aboriginal or Latina girl who simply walks down the street in the Downtown Eastside can expect to be the target of police questioning, search, detainment, and sometimes, even assault.

On the whole, these girls are subjected to more abuse and violence than any other group of girls in Canada and the response from the police is often to further strip them of their dignity, freedom, and most basic human rights.

We acknowledge that there is a serious problem in the Downtown Eastside, one that requires a complex and systemic response to massive oppression, a history of colonization, poverty, violence, and addiction, not a show of power in the faces of the most vulnerable. There are serious violations of law here. One of the most disturbing illegal activities here seems to be in actions of the police who appear to be violating their own code of conduct, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and international human rights laws, including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, all of which prohibit discriminatory and unbridled police authority. This police campaign is exactly the kind of extreme policing and human rights violation at which Canada would waive a finger in disgust and horror if it were going on elsewhere in the world. For the safety and dignity of homeless teenage girls in this neighbourhood, we demand an immediate withdrawal of the additional police forces in the Downtown Eastside and a commitment from the Vancouver City Police to work in cooperation with the community.

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