London police crackdown on open drug use panned: ‘Could see more deaths’

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The London police chief’s plan to arrest people using drugs in public is impractical, won’t solve anything and could cause more deaths, outreach workers and organization leaders charge.

“I don’t see how it actually helps. I can see how it actually harms,” Chuck Lazenby, executive director of Unity Project shelter and services, said. “What could be one consequence is more people in back alleyways, down by the river, pushed into more fringe areas. We could see more deaths.”

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For the chief to suggest arrests by officers can act as “a pathway to care” ignores the fact there’s very little care at the end of the pathway, Leticia Mizon, an outreach worker for sex workers in the city, said.

“People don’t want their crises in public but they’re forced to. People who use drugs don’t want to live in the parks, near your floodplains. They want housing. They want treatment. We just don’t have it,” she said.

London police Chief Thai Truong told the police board meeting Wednesday that arresting people caught using illicit drugs in public will be part of a new strategy to make the city safer.

“There’s a lot of concern in the community” about public drug use, he said. “We know we can’t arrest our way out of this …. (but) there are times when it is appropriate.”

Sometimes, police will make arrests but not lay charges, Truong said, calling officers “a pathway to care” for people.

Mayor Josh Morgan said he supports the idea, and that open drug use is a safety issue downtown hurting businesses and preventing people coming to the core.

The strategy of arresting people and taking them to “care” isn’t practical, Lazenby said.

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Treatment, recovery, addiction counselling, shelter, housing – “We are bottlenecked,” Lazenby said. “I don’t see how this will work. It’s not like you can pick people up and send them to a space where they can stay and make their home. We don’t have the spaces.  For people who are looking to get away from substance use and want immediate access to treatment and recovery, that just doesn’t exist.”

Talk of arresting people using drugs takes the focus away from practical measures, including investments in emergency care, housing and income supports that should have been made a decade ago, she said.

“Investing in these kinds of solutions (arrests) perhaps distracts us from the work that we need to do to have sustainable solutions,” Lazenby said.

Sarah Campbell, executive director of Ark Aid Street Mission, also pointed out the lack of resources as a reason arresting people won’t get them help.

“If those pathways existed now I believe they would be used more often now,” she said.

Before arresting people to get into treatment, London should expand treatment for those who want it, Campbell said.

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“If we get those pathways going now, let’s see how much voluntary uptake there is. Because the current pathways are filled with people who want that care.”

In Ontario, the average wait time for getting into addiction treatment is 42 days and after treatment, there’s rarely suitable housing available, Mizon said.

That means the solution isn’t arresting people using drugs in public, she said.

“The solution is to increase social service payments, focus on housing, focus on the health of individuals as whole and doing our best not to rip away life-affirming services.”

Lazenby wondered aloud how police, despite a large budget increase, would have the resources to arrest people over and over again.

“Is arresting for people using drugs going to prevent them from using drugs? I don’t think so,” Lazenby said.

There are some good officers, but for most people who have to use drugs in public it’s historically been a “tumultuous relationship” with police, Mizon said.

“There are better people more equipped to support people who use drugs, in a passionate way, a far safer way,” she said. “Encouraging and increasing the power for London police to conduct street checks and potentially escalating a situation resulting in harm or death is irresponsible, especially when we have front-line workers trained and engaged daily in this work.”

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Mizon agreed that arresting people could send them to fringe areas to use drugs where there are no supports and no community eyes watching and able to call for help.

“We as harm reductionists have encouraged people to use in public space so we don’t find bodies in the woods. Dead bodies don’t recover,” Mizon said.

“Now we’re saying, ‘Don’t die alone in the trees but also don’t use in public because cops will come and arrest you.’ What does that tell people? What resources or options are left for people?”

Truong said he had no timeline for when his plan would be made public but it is a priority. He added he doesn’t need board approval for this operational change.

That attitude is “a red flag for me,” said Mizon, citing her own experience in governance and sitting on boards.

The police board should have a say in this “profound policy and procedure change,” Mizon said.

rrichmond@postmedia.com

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