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SAANICHNEWS Friday, March 15, 2013
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Off the beaten path Saanich police’s year-round bike patrol acts as the eyes and ears for homelessness
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ehind the Pearkes recreation building, a thicket of trees hides a camp in Cuthbert Holmes park, complete with a grey dome tent and a round bamboo chair. Unfortunately for the owner, it’s moving day. A Saanich parks crew carefully hauls out muddy mounds of gear, and the tent and chair frame is piled into a work truck. Saanich police officer Const. Doug FrankEdward Hill lin spots a discarded Reporting hypodermic needle where the parking lot meets the brush. A parks worker with a long pickup tool deposits it into a syringe box. “This is the third or fourth camp we’ve found in the park since September,” says Sgt. Alan Gurzinski. “It’s regular for somebody to be camping in here.” Gurzinski and Franklin are one-half of the Saanich police department’s mountain bike unit, an all-weather four-officer squad that patrols parks and trails and hidden areas year-round. Although it’s not the unit’s only mandate,
Edward Hill/News staff
Const. Doug Franklin and Sgt. Alan Gurzinski, one-half of the Saanich police's year-round bike squad, seen here on a trail in Cuthbert Holmes park behind the Pearks recreation centre, patrol the hidden and hard to get to spaces in the municipality. monitoring and managing homeless camps in Saanich is a constant preoccupation. “There are those to choose to (live) outside and don’t bother anybody,” says Franklin an eight year veteran of the force with 13 months in the bicycle unit. “We check on their welfare and don’t chase them out. But then we have prolific users who use the park as their Petri dish of hypodermic debris and glass pipes.” It doesn’t take long for this day’s camp to disappear into the back of Saanich work trucks, and the owner, a known drug user, hasn’t appeared. The officer say hauling away someone’s possessions is a last resort. Most campers are warned over a period of days to move on, but police patience is thin when it comes to consuming drugs a
few metres from a recreation centre crawling with kids. Camping is illegal in all parks in Saanich. “We think this guy panhandles at the (Trans-Canada Highway) and McKenzie. He knows not to camp here,” says Gurzinski, a 17-year Saanich officer who took command of the bike unit last September. “We give people the time and opportunity to move along, depending on how big the camp is. If not, we move them out and usually it’s quite a mess they leave.” At any given time, the bike patrol keeps tabs on 20 to 30 homeless people living in the district, many who struggle with substance abuse, but who want to avoid the toxic downtown street culture Officers hit the known hotspots every day – Cuthbert Holmes park is popular due
to its size and dense brush – but police have found camps in every major park in Saanich, including Mount Doug and ElkBeaver Lake, and in hidden patches of noman’s-land along the regional trails. The officers direct the homeless population toward help, but keeping track of camps is also part of crime prevention. “With homeless camps comes crime to an area,” Gurzinski says, typically vehicle break-ins and property theft. “We check to make sure they’re OK,” he notes. “We talk to them about how to get housing and how to look for jobs and work. Sometimes we bring them coffee and make sure they are fed and have water.” PLEASE SEE: Bike patrol, Page A11
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