• These comments are from the new Vancouver Copwatch group, taken from their facebook page. It appears to reveal their middle class, liberal, pacifist background and their opposition to anything different. In an article by them published in the georgia straight today, one of the main organizers, jennifer allen, quoted below about why they are in the DTES and not their own neighbourhoods, located in the west end.

  http://www.straight.com/article-634861/vancouver/cop-watch-patrols-streets

  There’s a reason why Vancouver Cop Watch concentrates on this poor neighbourhood.

  “I talk to people, you know, like in the West End and ask them, ‘You have any issues with your police? Like, are your police harassing you or do they do anything?’ ” Allan said. “And a lot of them are like, ‘No. They’re a part of the community.’ And I can feel that because I live in the West End. And I can really feel when I come to this area of Vancouver that the police are part of the community, unlike when you go into the Downtown Eastside.”

   

  

  Vancouver Cop Watch VCW was shaking hands with the police to introduce our self to the police who would be in charge of our rally. We are not anti-police,we want to hold the police who abuse the public accountable. We want people to see us as a professional organization,not a bunch of street punks. Unamed you also have to remember our safety too. At anytime the VPD could attack us,while we're out doing street patrols.
  

  2 hours ago · Like
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  Vancouver Cop Watch We kicked off the morning with the VPD calling us @ 7:30am about our rally,to make sure it was going to be peaceful. We had to go through every speaker with them and what they were going to be talking about. If at anytime the VPD felt threatened they would have sent in their provocateur agents to shut us down. That was our biggest fear. We were only acting professional when shaking the hands of the police,who were policing our rally. Hopefully they know VCW is only a threat to the VPD who are not doing their job.
  

  2 hours ago · Like

   

Another gross comment by VCW was this one, also taken from their facebook page, in regards to some of the speakers who attended the rally from the DTES.

www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003307664575

thanks for the comments, good to know.

Folks may be interested to know that there was a Vancouver Copwatch group that conducted regular patrols in the DTES between 2002-2006 (a rough estimate as I'm not good with dates).  Initially started as a joint project between the PIVOT Legal Society and the now-defunct Collective Opposed to Police Brutality (COPB), it became an autonomous project.

COPB's politics were broadly anarchist and militant, as anyone familiar with their kick-ass newsletter "Obstruction of Injustice" would know.  And I'm sure they would be appalled to learn that the good name of Copwatch is being used by this group of "liberal, middle-class pacifists" whose very practices are at odds with basic Copwatch philosophy. 

For example, Copwatch trainings always stessed that while it was important to be polite and respectful to everybody they encountered during a patrol, including the cops, it was important to adopt a firm "no engagement" policy regarding the police as this would tend to undermine their credibility with the local community.  If DTES residents see you filming somebody getting arrested one minute, while having a casual conversation with the cops that arrested them the next, it tends to undermine your credibility in the community.  In other words, shaking hands with the cops is a definite "no-no"!

In fact, it was part of Copwatch philosophy and practice to encourage and assist community residents to solve problems without the involvement of the cops.  Often this was nothing more than taking the time to talk to somebody who had a problem and needed a sympathetic ear, if only for a few minutes.

While Copwatch has never been an explicitly anarchist project, there is good reason why you often read about it on anarchist websites like infoshop.org.  Copwatch is about using the tools available to us to hold the cops accountable for their violent and abusive behaviour, in particular towards poor and marginalized communities, while at the same time having no illusions about the role they play as enforcers for the 1 per cent.

Frankly, I've never heard of a Copwatch group asking the cops for permission to hold a rally (and on International Day Against Police Brutality no less!), much less allowing them to micro-manage an action right down to who the speakers are and what they are going to say.

I would advise Copwatch groups elsewhere in North America to be wary of the Vancouver "Copwatch" group and their pro-police message.

I heard that another group organized an IDAPB rally outside the copshop yesterday; it would be interesting to learn about them and their politics.

Please read this solid example of how Copwatch Vancouver responds to criticism.  So dissapointing.

• Eli Mills

  • Unfortunately, after watching the organizers of today's event shaking hands with police at an anti police brutality event, I am forced to unfriend Vancouver Cop Watch on facebook. I'll also be extremely apprehensive of attending any events organized by VCW in the future.

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  Friday

  Vancouver Cop Watch

  • I am sorry you feel that way. 

    Jen Allan

It is absolutely disgusting that the good name of Copwatch has been appropriated by a bunch of pro-cop liberals.  Thanks so much to the good folks at copwatch.wordpress.com for their clarification (I just checked out your site and it's great!).  You may want to add a disclaimer, though, that you have nothing to do with this sorry bunch.

Shaking hands with the cops, praising VPD mouthpiece Steve Adams for almost shooting a guy and denouncing the IDAPB rally in Montreal (btw, Jen, almost everybody arrested - only about 4 are actually facing charges - were not engaging in "violence" but were mass arrested by Montreal pigs after they declared the rally "illegal") are indicative of an approach that is far from the intent of those historically involved in Copwatch (see last paragraph below).

Vancouver "Copwatch" (sic) also promotes the dangerous view that police brutality is caused by a few "bad apples" as opposed to being a systemic part of "normal" policing ("We're not anti-police, we're anti-police brutality").  While not all cops engage in brutality, those that don't cover-up for those that do (the "blue wall of silence").  This is why it's quite rare for a cop to denounce the violence and abuse of his or her fellow cops.

In order to avoid confusion, might I suggest that so-called "Vancouver Copwatch" change their name to something more appropriate like "Vancouver Cop-Helpers" as that's clearly their intent: to help the "good cops" change the behaviour of the "bad cops" by pointing out the error of their ways.  

Police violence is not an aberration; it is (and always has been) a fundamental aspect of policing.  A great book on the subject is "Our Enemies in Blue" by Kristian Williams (Kristian himself is/was a member of Copwatch in Portland, Oregon).

First, thanks for your support and encouraging words GBLK.

Second, the address is copwatchvancouver.wordpress.com

Third, in the about section is a statement from the blog that we are in NO way connected with VCW and some reasons why.

We noticed the irritating similarity and will maybe add something more to try and seperate the distance from the group, althought they SHOULD change their name to vancouver cop-helpers, haha, Or alternatively, vancouver cop collaberators-as seen as a comment on VCW FB page suggesting a more sincere name change . Haha.

FTP-ACAB

I see a lot of animosity toward Vancouver Copwatch here, and to be honest, I believe it misses the point.  As a writer with a lot of familiarity with the DTES, who lived in the DTES, and experienced quite a lot of the DTES including experiences with constables who abuse their power and expect to get away with it in the DTES, I also understand that there are major gaps in understanding which need to be bridged on both sides.  I will say, much of that understanding is missing on the side of the VPD, as evidenced by their long-standing ignorance of the benefits to the neighbourhood provided by Insite, as well as their blind opposition to Insite.  There are many, many reasons why the relationship between police and this community is so tarnished.

What the DTES needs more than anything is a workable relationship with an unbiased and non-judgemental police force so that tragedies such as the missing women aren't allowed to happen, so that people being victimized aren't further victimized to the point of obscene violence and/or death.

There is no textbook on how to go about doing this, but it definitely involves recognizing that people are individuals and systems are made up of people.  There are a fair number of bad cops in Vancouver, and we all know about it.  I've met some of them, and I've heard stories about many others.  I've also heard stories about cops who struggle against the system they work in, who try to make a difference in the DTES and who are thwarted even daily by the attitudes toward the system being transposed onto every individual regardless of what they stand for, merely because someone else wearing the same uniform abused the power granted to them.  Somehow these gaps in understanding must be bridged in order for police violence to be addressed.  Somehow we need to deprive the bad cops of the cover they hide behind, cover made up primarily of our automatic distrust of anyone in that profession.  We need to break down the barriers in that system which keeps the good cops from being able to point out the abuses and crimes of the bad ones, and if a simple handshake lays out just one brick in the foundation of that bridge, then those hands are doing far more to end police violence than the hands that would instead hurl that brick through the air.

Some criticism may be warranted.  After all, this is our community.  But if the goal truly is to end police violence and make the people of the DTES safe from victimization, then that criticism should be constructive, and should be made to progress our understanding of this very convoluted issue.  Let's open dialogue, not close doors.

-Jason Morden

Hey Copwatch Vancouver and others on this thread,

In my opinion you're offbase accusing Jenn and others in Van Copwatch of being "middle-class do-gooders". Those active with Copwatch are established DTES low-income community members and very far from either middle-class or liberal. They both understand police brutality and harassment from a personal and intimate perspective, not from an outside or "helper" point of view.

I also disagree with this Copwatch's analysis of how policing functions and how much weight to give to importance of "bad apples" versus the institutional function of police in Vancouver, particularly during an intense gentrification drive. But, in my experience, their ideas about good and bad cops are shared by a lot of multiply oppressed (and police-targeted) people in the DTES. For example, VANDU has long met and dialogued with cops and currently there are regular Aboriginal policing discussions going on in Carnegie that include the VPD (at arms-length). And there's Sister Watch.

I think we should take on this problem with care and openness and patience to work with and support our communities as we fight police harassment and brutality rather than rejecting and denouncing the active struggles of oppressed people because they're not correct in all ways.

Criticism is important but these comments have a pretty denunciating tone and that's not going to be helpful when these Copwatchers are in trouble with the cops... which I know is a common occurance. I followed a "The Beat" camera crew and BET cops for three blocks tonight with a camera and they were on edge and threatening me because Copwatch is regularly harassing them. If Jenn (or others with Copwatch) get arrested not only will they have a tough time with solidarity from activists who do not live in the DTES but they won't even know they can reach out for the support they need.

In solidarity,

Ivan

Its sounds denouncing because it is. When you ignore, censor and reject peoples criticism or suggestions because they arent like yours thats how you get denounced. When you lie and mislead people, thats another good way to get denounced.

Unless they can work with other people, in a way that doesnt offend so many people or put them at an unessesary & stupid risk, why should they have a blanket of support when they get themselves into trouble? Why should people go out and support them, then have VCW giving information on you, potentially, to the police, lets say, if they thought you were a person of interest / recognized you as a person of interest and leaned on the organizers who have admitted to being open with information to the police with and without consent? Does that sound safe to you?

They need to post that information so people know what kind of a group this is, that it is way different from the copwatches they are familiar with. That they are collaberators with the police, whether you agree with it or not that is indeed something people need to know. Why should they hide this information?

The way they have handled questions or criticism, their censorship & hypocritical nature, their religious beliefs being integrated into the group, their naive reformist pipe dream that police are employed to protect the weak, their denouncing of the montreal actions, their self righteous & insulting comments about DTES folks, praising a pig who almost killed a man- on the exploitive, (beat tv series companion) pig-circle-jerk blog, The Beat Cop Diaries- & sucking up to him in another comment....are just some of the reasons we would never support a goup like this.

They have essentially hijacked a radical, worldwide project of community action and done the exact opposite, they are empowering the police while disempowering the people, by again, being led to be dependant on the same individuals who repress and assault us on many different fronts every day, and trusting them to change their whole fascist institution from the bottom up.

Solidarity runs both ways and we wouldnt run anywhere with the main organizers of this group.