The apology follows a motion before Vancouver City Council on Tuesday night calling for changes to the way scans are conducted. During these scans, which run daily Monday through Friday, city workers, accompanied by police, clear debris from Downtown Eastside sidewalks. The city said its crews were trained to dispose of rubbish, debris and abandoned construction, but not items that were “clearly personal items”. But proponents say the scanners sometimes throw objects that people appreciate. “We sincerely regret and apologize for any damage or injury that has occurred as a result of this work and acknowledge that important items have been discarded,” Taryn Scollard, deputy chief engineer, said in a statement. The proposal, submitted by K. Jean Swanson, calls on the city to develop an alternative, community-led process for street cleaning using peer workers rather than police. It also requires the development of storage facilities and the creation of a system where people can easily retrieve downloaded items. A scene in Crab Park on the banks of the Vancouver Burrard Inlet on Wednesday. A sign from the Pivot Legal Society posted on it reads: “This scene is my home.” (Justine Boulin / CBC) The proposal did not go to the polls, but Scollard said city staff would incorporate elements from the drive into their work with the community this summer. He said they would have more information to share in the coming weeks. Const. Vancouver Police Department spokesman Steve Addison told the CBC that police would no longer be accompanying the city’s staff after July 1. Addison said the city had asked officers to escort workers due to safety concerns. “We have long argued that this is an inappropriate use of police resources and is not a basic policing service, but we have temporarily compelled the request,” Edison wrote.
Objects were acquired
Meenakshi Mannoe, who works as an activist at the Pivot Legal Society, said sweeping the streets to keep sidewalks clean and safe was theoretically sensible. In reality, however, Mannoe said the way the city implements the policy is displacing people who rely on public space. $ 2,410 worth of personal property is estimated to have been seized by sweepers over a five-day period in 2021, according to a report by various organizations, including the Pivot Legal Society. Through interviews with people who experienced street cleanups, they found captured items such as tents, clothes, documents, ID cards, mobility devices, heirlooms and photographs. Mannoe said these items are either thrown out or stored in a way that makes it difficult for people to retrieve them. “People are not notified of where their belongings have gone. They are not given proof of what has been taken … What we hear from people is that their belongings are rubbish.”
A hackham game
A city worker conducting these scans once compared his job to a ‘whack-a-mole’ game because it was constantly transporting people, Swanson said. “They move people from one place and then go to another. And then they have to move them from that place, etc.” Scenes and constructions in front of a music venue, The Imperial, located on Main Street in Vancouver. (Justine Boulin / CBC) Swanson recalled a sweep she noticed when she was asked by a man suffering from pneumonia to move his tent from Oppenheimer Park on a cold day. “He had nowhere to store his tent, no way to carry it or anything; he just raised his hands and left.” As a volunteer for the Carnegie Community Action Project at the time, she knew there was no housing available for him. As the proposal was not forwarded to the council on Tuesday, the city announced that speakers would not be heard at Wednesday’s Standing Committee meeting. The Pivot Legal Society said in a statement that more than 30 community members had signed up to speak out in support of the proposal at Wednesday’s meeting.
