by NOEMI LOPINTO

On Wednesday, Nov. 20, angry Pointe St-Charles residents met with police at the St-Colomba community centre to express their rage and sense of powerlessness in dealing with what they say is an explosion of prostitution and drugs on their streets. The residents met with the commander-in-chief of Station 18, Daniel Rousseau, three students from the police technology department of Collège de Maisonneuve, and a sergeant from the police’s community relations department, who were hoping to ease tensions between the force and residents who are on the verge of violence.

Residents say the numbers of prostitutes and their so-called “irritants”—condoms, syringes, pushers, pimps and aggressive clients—have risen dramatically in the last year. “It’s getting so you can hardly breathe without seeing one,” complains Pamela, a resident who has lived in the Point for four years and requested that her identity be kept secret. “I see the girls jumping out of trucks, impaired, in the mornings. I find condoms and syringes in the park across from my house. I don’t have an idea of what to do. Maybe have a zone where they can do their business, make it so they can get help for their problems.”

Long-time Point residents pride themselves on their sense of unity, and they have not traditionally trusted police. Members of the community say they have been left to their own devices by law enforcement officials for many years, and are struggling between an instinctive resentment of police and a burgeoning sense of the size of the problem. Many were unimpressed with what the police had brought to the table, an initiative dubbed Operation Cyclops, which began as a pilot project in western downtown’s Faubourg/Ville-Marie district in April. It encourages residents to spy on, and then denounce, prostitute clients by filling out an “observation report,” describing an incident between a prostitute and a client, and by making sure to note the make of the man’s car, his license plate number and his appearance. Police will call the client at his home and warn him not to return.

Sound, fury, and maybe more

The problem, says Point resident Sue Vézina, is the johns aren’t always in cars, and the prostitutes can get aggressive. She says even children are sometimes propositioned. “My oldest son looks a lot older than 11,” says Vezina. “What made me real mad… is that our children are not allowed to be children. They shouldn’t have to see this every day. I think we should form groups of people armed with pots and pans, and when we see a prostitute, we make a racket so it’s impossible for her to stay there.” Others are talking about using more than pots and pans to scare sex workers away, threatening vigilante justice and violence.

Last week’s meeting was a follow-up to previous police-resident meetings in November 2001 and in the spring of 2002. Residents say they made the exact same complaints now that they did then: syringes in the parks, junked-out girls selling sex half-naked, garbages filled to the brim with condoms, prostitutes on every street corner, public sex acts, aggressive johns, pimps soliciting teenage girls, mothers and even elderly women. Station 18 commander Rousseau points out that Operation Cyclops is only one of many possible solutions. “This is a societal problem,” says Rousseau. “We need the community’s help to improve the situation. Operation Cyclops is not a complete solution, it’s only a part.”

“Anne,” has lived in the Point her entire life. She is also the mother of a teenage daughter, whom she says has been propositioned and followed by johns twice in the last year. “I am so angry,” she says. “Three guys in a car chased after her. I’m trying to maintain some respect for the prostitutes, but this is our home, our community. This is not a new thing in society, I just don’t want it to be in my neighbourhood. I am angry with myself for being so angry with the prostitutes, wanting to attack them.”

Calling all johns

According to police community relations officer Sergeant Eric Goyet, street prostitution only makes up about 10 per cent of all of its various forms. Unfortunately, it is also the most visible.

“Repression doesn’t work,” says Goyet. “When we arrest the prostitute, she just goes to work in another area. Or she goes back to work to pay the fine she was given by the courts. When we arrest the clients, it takes months to process, uses too many officers, costs too much money and time, and maybe we arrest 100 to 120 of them a year. [With Operation Cyclops] we reach them in their homes with a simple phone call. We inform them of the law and the consequences of their return. If they return, they will be arrested and fined. Of the 700 men that were called by police since May, only one per cent of them came back. Most of these men are married heads of families—they have everything to lose if they’re caught.”

Last spring, Goyet says, residents in the Faubourg/Ville-Marie area began to put up signs with pictures of clients’ cars, run after clients and chase prostitutes down the street. And this year, after a spring meeting with residents in Centre-Sud, police at Station 22 began what Lainie Basman, a community liaison officer at prostitutes’ rights group Stella, calls a “witch-hunt,” fining prostitutes for jaywalking, loitering or offering services in a public place, following them in their squad cars and shining their headlights on them in the street. Many of these prostitutes, hounded out of their familiar territory, have ended up in Pointe St-Charles.

“Nobody pretends this is to stop prostitution, it’s purely about visibility,” says Basman. “Women go out now specifically to work, and they won’t talk to community organizations anymore. Before, we could spend time talking and working with them, but now they are too stressed out. Some may be drug users, but they are not primarily responsible for the syringes or for the condoms. People are pointing the finger at the some of the most fragile, vulnerable and weakest members of our society. All the problems of a community can’t be eliminated simply by getting rid of the prostitutes. Sex workers have to be included, they have something to add to the discourse.”

New territory, new threats

“Julie” has been a prostitute for five years. According to her, law enforcement was lax in the Point until about a week ago. She says repression puts prostitutes in danger.

“When you are working in a regular area you know your clients, and you don’t fear them,” she says. “Regulars are safe. When the police crack down, you have to move and then you don’t know who you’re with, so you’re in danger. Not everybody has a drug problem. Some people are [turning tricks] to get by, to buy food and diapers. A lot of them are parents. If they could just leave everybody alone to their own district, I don’t think there would be so many in the Point. I don’t have problems (with residents) but I’m not a troublemaker either, I don’t work during the day. I couldn’t do that to my kids.” :