Login / RegisterProtesters plan to crash Odd Squad Productions Society bash
Hollywood’sSteven Seagal is coming as a special guest. And Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson is also slated to attend.
This evening (June 7), it’s the 15th-anniversary gala and fundraising dinner for the Odd Squad Productions Society, a nonprofit organization of active and retired Vancouver police officers. The Odd Squad films interactions between its members and residents of the Downtown Eastside.
Not everyone is happy with what the group is doing. In fact, protesters are planning to show up at the Vancouver Convention Centre, where the Odd Squad is holding its party.
“The Odd Squad is a bunch of cops that go around doing documentaries on various social issues to educate youth to be aware of—so, like, stuff on gangs, addiction, alcoholism, stuff like that,” Jennifer Allan told the Straight in a phone interview. “But how they go about doing it is very exploitative.”
Allan is a cofounder of the citizens’ group Vancouver Cop Watch. Armed with cameras, members of this group monitor police actions in the Downtown Eastside.
Members of the Odd Squad on active police duty are also featured in a TV series produced by the Montreal-based Galafilm. Airing this summer, the 10-episode show called The Beat II follows police officers as they deal with people in the neighbourhood. It’s a follow-up to The Beat, which aired on Citytv in 2010.
According to Allan, many residents in the community didn’t like The Beat. “They told a one-way story about the Downtown Eastside that’s a horrible, criminal, AIDS–infested neighbourhood,” Allan said.
The Odd Squad didn’t make a spokesperson available for interview with the Straight before deadline.
Doug King, a lawyer with the Pivot Legal Society, noted that his group doesn’t favour the Odd Squad’s practice of filming police-related incidents in the Downtown Eastside.
“It just raises the issue of why only the Downtown Eastside,” King told the Straight in a phone interview. “We’ve heard stories of police responding to domestic-assault incidents and showing up with camera crews. And that’s something I don’t think they would do in any other neighbourhood.”
King also said that there are questions on how waivers are being granted by residents to allow themselves to be filmed. “It’s an incredibly invasive thing to do,” he stated. “And it raises this kind of issue of discrimination in the neighbourhood. They treat the neighbourhood like a war zone.”
In a May 24 media release, the Odd Squad Productions Society stated that its anniversary event has the support of 50 corporate sponsors.
I remember during the olympics the revenuers were hassling the poor. The Legal Observer program was in effect (really, it should be 24/7/365, but that is another topic), so they were sometimes videotaping these revenuer vs. human being battles. The Revenuers would actively instruct the poor being arrested to object to filming---and so the LOs would dutifully comply. So I heard, anyway
It would be very fun to make a video of odd squad members asking them "Do you know the law of the realm and mean to observe it well?"
People doing unhealthy things and engaging in criminal activity is captured regularly. And the DTES is one of North America's most highly profiled socially challenged neighbourhoods. Is it one of the most dangerous? Well, I think there are poorer and more dangerous neighbourhoods in the states where people wouldn't dare walk or drive through yet generations of children are still raised and go to school in literal ghettos.
Regardless, what happens in the DTES has people interested, and therefore tuned in. Police also have stories to tell, and have chosen this outlet to do so. It can't be just DTES residents who provide their side of why they do what they do and live how they live.
Balancing perspectives is important, it educates us on how the world is. One sidedness is harmful in the long run because people then turn a blind eye to the actual problem instead of addressing the why's and how's of the circumstance. Being too narrow minded is getting this country into all sorts of problems. People need to accept that there are two sides of a coin and deal, instead of diverting blame to others as the solution.
You can't cherry pick when its good and not good to do something. If it were that simple we wouldn't have a DTES situation in the first place.
Trust me there are many more residents down here who support the police and are tired of having their neighborhood hijacked by groups like VANDU & people looking for some fame like Jennifer Allan.
This stuff is filmed in Borneo, it's not anthropology. The films' subjects all live within blocks of the Convention Centre.
So, how many of the films' subjects have been invited to this bash...hmm? I hope it is quite a few, a significant number. Don't actors always get invited to the "wrap party"?
The odd squad is about educating youth and society about real problems that happen in this neighborhood- which is famous for being a ghetto in Vancouver. I don't think they are 'discriminating' by using the dt east side at all.
This is called "propaganda."
There ought to be a law to keep the police from engaging in law enforcement activities. Psychological Warfare, that is, the production of propaganda, ought to be heavily regulated to the point that police forces do not engage in it.
If I may, one of the reasons "these people" object to the work of the Odd Squad is that it uses as its base of operations a neighbourhood where, historically, police have had their way with residents, virtually without restriction or fear of reprisal, for decades.
This raises questions about privacy issues, genuine informed consent for filming, or whether or not consent was given or even obtained at all.
As well, the vast majority of youth--meaning virtually none of them--watching the squad's presentations will never be spending any time on the Downtown Eastside.
The prevalence of alcohol- and prescription-medicine addiction in Shaugnessy, the West Side, and in the working- and middle-class enclaves of East and South Vancouver is far more of a threat to these youth.
But you will never see cops with cameras busting down doors on The Crescent.
These shows are easy, feel-good productions that enable a lot of people to pat themselves on the back and swan about with politicians, corporate bigwigs, and guest celebrities once or twice a year.
That they have a lot of dedicated volunteers who actually care about these issues is beside the point. Their efforts would be much better suited working for organizations that don't exploit the most defenceless in our society for cheap propaganda flicks aimed at upholding a ruinously failing "war on drugs".
I caught that after I posted it---I think it makes sense, in a way, but what I really meant is that there ought to be a law to keep polce from engaging in non law enforcement activities. It was not a freudian dick, I swear. Oh dear.
Ernie Crey is right,when did the police with the odd squad have time to make documentries about the DTES,when there is 39 women missing in the DTES.
Did the Odd Squad even bring up Vancouver's missing and murdered women in their BEAT TV show ??
VPD put the cameras down and start looking for those women.!!