On a brisk afternoon on 14 April 2026, Tyson Singh Kelsall was walking to work in Vancouver\u2019s Downtown Eastside when he noticed five people lying sedated in a line along the sidewalk on Main Street. They must have used the same poisoned supply, he thought. For Singh Kelsall, who has spent years working in harm reduction in the neighbourhood, this sight was all too familiar as Vancouver\u2019s drug supply is increasingly contaminated with sedatives like benzodiazepines.<\/p>\n
But what he saw next made him stop. Arriving before an ambulance, Vancouver police worked their way down the row, yanking each person toward the building wall. None of the officers checked the people\u2019s breathing or asked if they needed help. Once the people were dragged from the edge of the road, the officers left. Singh Kelsall trains people in overdose responses and knows that you should not roughly haul someone sedated by opioids mixed with benzos. You position them carefully, check their airway, and stay until help arrives.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do they think moving people just five feet will solve?\u201d asked Singh Kelsall, researcher with Police Oversight With Evidence and Research (Power) \u2013 a community-based research project with Simon Fraser University. \u201cEveryone knows that it\u2019s not a preferable situation for people to be sleeping in the middle of the sidewalk. But this is putting people at risk of injury.\u201d<\/p>\n
Singh Kelsall and the team at Power have been documenting police interactions in the Downtown Eastside (DTES), one of Vancouver\u2019s oldest neighbourhoods, since the project launched in July 2024. They hold weekly community drop-in sessions where residents can report instances of violence, aggression, or intimidation by law enforcement. And twice a week, trained members conduct observations in the neighbourhood and document their findings.<\/p>\n
They monitor an area, less than a square kilometre, that has become the epicentre of the city\u2019s housing, drug and mental health crisis, and which is located adjacent to BC Place, a host stadium at this summer\u2019s World Cup<\/a>.<\/p>\n Home to generations of low-income residents, an Indigenous population and people experiencing homelessness, DTES is one of the most overpoliced communities in Canada. A 2018 CBC investigation<\/a> revealed that residents there had the highest fatality rate during police encounters of any city in Canada. Police practices in the area actively increase the risk of overdose, pushing people away from supervised consumption sites and into unsafe injecting environments, according to a study by the BC Centre of Substance Use<\/a>.<\/p>\n But since the start of 2026, Power has documented an uptick in aggressive practices by law enforcement agencies in the city. Community members, civil society groups, and researchers blame the World Cup.<\/p>\n According to Kelsall, it is now routine for a team of several police officers, sometimes with city workers, bylaw officers, and occasionally a housing worker, to patrol the main corridor in the neighbourhood up to eight times a day. Power has documented cases of officers detaining and handcuffing people while searching their bags, threatening people with tickets for questioning why they were being held, and issuing $250 fines for smoking cigarettes.<\/p>\n This practice of imposing geographic restrictions on individuals to exclude them from a specific area is commonly referred to as \u201cred-zoning,\u201d according to Nicholas Blomley, professor of geography at Simon Fraser University.<\/p>\n \u201cThe net effect can be actually quite profound in terms of people\u2019s wellbeing, people\u2019s health, and ability to access vital resources, as well as community, including friends and partners,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n