Category: Poverty and addiction
Posted on June 3, 2012
New report on cocaine trade finds banks in consuming countries get drug profits, while producers get violence
Yes, BC is currently in the grip of a wave of shootings related to organized crime and the drug trade, but the random shootings here are nothing compared to the rampant violence shaking countries like Colombia and Mexico…. Read More
Updated on January 14, 2012
VPD, hospitals grinding down wait for police “handing off” mental health patients, but costs still high
Vancouver Police Department officers are still spending hundreds of hours a year waiting at Vancouver hospitals to “hand off” mental health patients they have apprehended, according to a VPD memo to city council, but the average wait is… Read More
Updated on January 11, 2012
Low barrier shelters continue to pay dividends to downtown businesses
Ever since Vancouver’s low barrier shelters opened in the wake of Gregor Robertson’s 2008 election victory, the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association has carefully monitored aggressive panhandling, open drug use and numbers of street homeless in its 96-block… Read More
Updated on September 15, 2011
City police tally tragic cost of province’s failure to fund mental health services
Continuing coverage of the problems at VGH’s psychiatric facility have largely glossed over the huge cost to city taxpayers that results from the failutre to fund mental health services. Nineteen mentally ill individuals Vancouver police sought to refer… Read More
