"I just want to be left alone"

Maybe I've seen too many episodes of "The Closer" (although I don't think that's possible: best cop show on TV and when I saw the series finale, I felt like I was saying goodbye to some good friends), but whenever I see a body lying awkwardly in an alley I suspect the worst. Seeing large puddles of a reddish substance nearby just heightens the suspicion. 

So when I spotted a body lying awkwardly in the alley across from The Lord's Rain, I took notice; and when I saw large reddish puddles near him, I got even more alarmed. The fellow was breathing, which was a relief, so I knelt down and touched his shoulder. 

"Hey, bro'," I said. "You OK?" His eyes popped open. Bright blue eyes, under a close-cut crop of grey hair with a reasonably clear face.

"What?"

"Are you OK? Aside from lying face-down in an alley, let's say."

"Yeah. Yeah ... I'm just relaxed."

"Really? Heckuva place to be relaxing. Do you know where you are?"

He glanced around. "Yeah. What time you got?"

"10 to 8."

"OK. I just wanna be left alone."

"Hey, no problem. We got some coffee across the street, if you'd like some. Right where the sign says 'OPEN'."

I started away. One fellow walked past me down the alley and kept on going, barely looking at the man. A couple came over and the woman asked, "is he OK?" "Apparently," I replied. 

Just then, an unmarked police car pulled up and two cops got out. "Are you the one who called us?" one of them asked. "No," I said. "Someone called us." "He says he's OK." 

"Really: I'm fine ..."

The other cop knelt down beside him and they chatted for a bit. The first policeman -- older than the other, with an English accent -- came over to me. "Can our friend come over for a cup of tea or coffee?" "Absolutely," I said.

But after chatting with the man and helping him to his feet, he headed away down the alley, and the two cops went back to their beat.

===

For a brief period on Saturday, The Lord’s Rain looked like a convention of emergency personnel. A man had come in, ripped out of his mind on something, and promptly fell down. Danilo helped him to his feet and guided him to a bench beside the wall. No sooner had he sat down than he reeled and did a head-plant on the floor and lay there, unconscious.

John called 9-1-1. At the same time, another of the guys ran out and flagged down a passing police car. Two women constables came in, donned blue latex gloves and started trying to wake him up. 

At first, they had no success, and then, just as firefighters arrived (first responders), he started to open his eyes. He had a nasty red-turning-to-purple bruise on one eye and dried blood around one ear – apparently acquired before he came in. The police managed to get him sitting upright with his back against a chair and the firefighters started looking him over.

“I don’t need to go to hospital,” he kept asserting, throwing in some verbal abuse as the firefighters got more adamant that he should, “just to get checked out”.

“Listen,” one of the cops said, “you may have a head injury and you should let them check you over to make sure there isn’t damage in there.”

Another photo that won't go viral:
emergency personnel caring for someone.

“There’s nothing in there!” 

By now, the police sergeant in charge of that sector had arrived, along with the Ambulance Supervisor. The more they tried to convince him he should go to the hospital, the more he declared he was perfectly alright and didn’t need to go to the (EXPLETIVES DELETED) hospital.

The ambulance arrived. By now, we had about 10 uniforms inside, as if John had simply said "yes" when the 9-1-1 operator asked, “do you want police, fire or ambulance?”.

People, apparently, cannot be forced to go to the hospital if they don’t want to, no matter how convincing a case the emergency personnel make. Our friend suddenly got to his feet and stalked out of The Lord’s Rain, pausing to spit at the ambulance. 

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Danilo remarked after everyone had left. “When someone who’s on drugs sees people in uniforms, they get that rush of adrenalin and they immediately act like they’re sober.” 

I ran into the police sergeant a short time later. They were able to track the fellow to a SRO hotel, where he’d barged into someone’s room and started breaking things. “We got him cleaned up and got him home,” he said.

Every time I read or hear about “activists” claiming police unfairly target people on the DTES or see some amateur video that purports to show “brutality”, I think of scenes like this one. There are plenty, but strangely enough, you won’t find anyone with a cell phone camera eager to post pictures of them. So I thought I’d tell you. 

===

In the presentation I’ve been working on to spread the word and solicit support for The Lord’s Rain, I mention that the whole building and success of the project has been an example of God “getting His ducks in a row” long before He even planted the idea of providing showers for people on the Downtown East Side in anybody’s head. Connections formed years, and in some cases, decades, earlier – such as The Oasis and Andrew Sheret – re-surfaced to make the facility come to pass.

Now, it’s happened again. One of the common needs of the people we serve is footwear. “Street foot” is a nasty affliction, and many times I’ve seen feet that were positively rotting from the effects of wet and unsanitary footwear. That’s why it’s so important to keep up our supply of socks, and why we welcome donations of shoes of all kinds and sizes when they come in.

Following the media attention we got in the past month, we were contacted by the owner of Quick Cobbler. The shoe repair business has a charity giving program, in which they take in used shoes, fix them up, and donate them to the needy. Would we like to be included in the program? Of course, we would. So, praise God and blessings to Ron Nijdam and his company, we will be receiving shipments of reusable shoes every couple of months.

So what’s this long-term connection? 29 years ago, your agent was working in radio in Victoria and was hired to do a TV commercial. I played a newscaster (a real stretch, to be sure), interviewing “the shoe on the street” to see how they prefer to be repaired. The shoes – English accent for a pair of Oxfords, “Valley Girl” for a pair of outrageous-looking runners, rough and tough guy for a pair of work boots – all agreed on the same repair shop. At the end, cut back to newscaster, declaring that this shop can handle any situation. Camera tilts down to reveal newscaster has three legs. Hilarious.

The client? Quick Cobbler. Ron was with the Victoria store at the time.

The commercial may have been lost over time (I’m asking around, because I'd love to get a copy), but there are at least half a dozen people who remember it. And now the connection re-surfaces. If you have any shoes that could still bless someone – with a bit of fixing-up – you can find more information at http://www.quickcobbler.com/homeless-shoes.html or bring them around to the Quick Cobbler location at 430 West 2^nd Ave. in Vancouver.

And of course, if you have any socks you can donate to the Vancouver Sock Exchange, let me know and I can come and pick them up.

===

new logo

The Lord's Rain has a new "visual identity": a logo (which I've attached, as well) submitted by Justin McKay in response to a contest.

We like the fact that it has simple, quasi-corporate lines, while bringing together the Cross, an image of rainfall -- "latter rain," if you will -- and a very peace-inducing color scheme. 

Justin receives an eclectic set of prizes: a homemade birdhouse (built by an uncle of Janet Klassen, the assistant pastor at Gospel Mission -- and overseer of The Lord's Rain), a gift certificate to Army & Navy, and a set of tickets to a Vancouver Canadians baseball game. Marylee Stephenson, proprietor of an online gallery called "Indian Art From The Edge" (www.indianartfromtheedge.com), which promotes native Indian artists on the Downtown East Side, joined Janet in reviewing the entries, and the people who come into The Lord's Rain voted.

Janet presents the prizes to Justin

===

Amelia and I ran into an old friend from the Mission: Charlie. He’s an Eskimo (both he and another evangelist friend, Rob Gordon, call themselves “Eskimos”, rather than “Inuit”. Rob says “Inuit” refers to a specific group, while “Eskimo” is more encompassing) and Amelia has talked with him through many of his challenges. He’s tackled booze, marijuana, tobacco, and spends a lot of time just reading his Bible. "I been straight for months now," he said. "But you know what happens when you stay straight? You lose your friends."

"Those kind of friends, you don't need," Amelia said. "Besides, you make new ones," I added.

That can make it tough when one "cleans up". I remember Gilbert, the first street alcoholic I ministered to back in Victoria. He came to a series of healing services at the Victoria Miracle Centre and asked to be delivered from alcoholism. After four services, he declared himself clean, and in fact, stayed off the bottle and started to show how his life could be like without booze. But he wanted to see his friends, and couldn't resist going back to the downtown core to show them how clean he was. "They keep telling me, 'you'll be back,' and I tell them, 'no - I'm clean for good!'" 

Human nature being what it is, one often finds that people in a bad situation tend to resent anyone who tries to break out of it. That seems to be particularly true with people who turn to Christ to find a new life: the world is right there, reminding them of what they used to be and how they got there. 

And Gilbert did slip, winding up in the same sad milieu. I spoke to one of the ministers at a shelter/outreach in the city and told him how Gilbert's life had started to turn around after the prayers. "Yeah, I heard about that," he replied. "I didn't think it would last."

Thanks for the support.

Mind you, I wasn't much help, either. I was new to the Christian walk and didn't understand the importance of discipleship: being there for someone who's received the Lord and reinforcing their faith when it starts to flag.That's why I keep telling people that, while funding is an ongoing issue at The Lord's Rain and Gospel Mission, the real need is for people. Jesus didn't say, "the fields are white for the harvest, but we need money to do it"; He said, "we need workers to bring the crop in"; making sure the trumpet of faith sounds louder than the white noise of doubt.

The real picture of the DTES

A couple of weeks ago at Westpointe, I shared the story of Davona, the young woman who'd been a "fixture" for a while at The Lord's Rain but who recently had a baby: a confirmation that, even as we're surrounded by the death and despair on the Downtown East Side, God still wants LIFE to show forth and win out. Pastor Jon Boyd remarked afterwards that you hardly ever hear about good news out of the area -- the media and the activists who command attention know that bad news sells and good news is no news.

I may be a little late to the party with this one, but I discovered a TV series over the weeend that is the most realistic portrayal of the DTES I've seen in the six-plus years I've been ministering in the area. Actually, my mother-in-law in Toronto had been talking it up for some time: "The Beat", airing on OLN Saturdays at 10PM and Sundays at 9pm (Eastern), or online at http://www.oln.ca/details.php?id=99.

It's a reality show, focusing on Vancouver Police patrolling the Downtown East Side, dealing with the drug addicts and dealers, the prostitutes and the others generally labelled "street people". And rather than serving up the usual doom-and-despair that the popmedia give us about the DTES, I actually got a pretty good feeling from watching it. It has a very positive tone, showing police as compassionate individuals who truly care about the people they encounter on the DTES.

Talk about against-the-grain thinking!

I was reminded of the son of a friend of mine who's been on the VPD force for just about a year now, and whose hope has been to be assigned to the DTES.

The popmedia portrayal -- egged on by those "activists" -- is generally that cops are violent psychopaths who abuse poor, helpless vulnerable people. Of course, that's the image that gets the headline and the 40-second video clip. (Funny how scenes of police stopping to chat with a street person, helping them if they're lying on the street, or just keeping drug dealers off-balance, never seem to get "caught on tape".)

The episodes I caught last night went against-the-grain in another way: giving voice to the utter disdain the police have for Vancouver's "safe injection site". Many of you already know how I feel about it. It's a human experiment that has failed miserably, as evidenced by the fact that the situation of drugs, crime, homelessness and poverty has grown worse since InSite opened. A stat that came out from the police in last night's show was that, in 2001, the needle-exchange program dealt out about 180,000 needles; by 2009, that figure had ballooned to 3-million. Yet, as one of the cops said, getting anyone in the mainstream media to report a "contrarian" viewpoint is nearly impossible.

But it's like the little kid in "The Emperor's New Clothes": everyone's so blinded by the flash and glare of the myth that they can't see the truth. I've often said that Jesus is not about "harm reduction": He's about harm elimination. The solution involves getting people off drugs, rather than making it "healthier" for them, and you start by instilling the Hope of Christ in their lives. Things like InSite and needle exchanges make our jobs a lot tougher. But with God, nothing is impossible, and that's the good news.

(We note that the last two mayors who were ardent supporters of InSite only lasted one term, and they and the previous mayor -- who helped initiate it -- were all fragged by their own parties. Perhaps God is sending a political message?)

For all its grittiness and cinéma vérité, "The Beat" gives a good-news portrayal, showing up-close-and-personal what we deal with, without getting mired in the doom-and-despair thing. Well worth watching, and you might be moved, as I was, to fire off a letter of appreciation to OLN and to Galafilm, the producers.

Who really killed Hubbard?

Vancouver Police Sgt Mark Tonner has a column in today's Province about the shooting death of Michael Vann Hubbard, that says what many of us are probably thinking but may be drowned out in the hysteria of the media to attack the police and the rush to judgment (and headlines) of the anti-police "advocates" on the Downtown East Side. Mark's argument goes like this:

• man is stopped on suspicion of breaking into a vehicle
• man pulls knife from backpack
• man refuses to drop knife when told
• man is shot

Of course, the victim's family has now surfaced (recall that this man was homeless while alive) along with the head of an advocacy group that claims to serve the people on the Downtown East Side, planning to sue the police for wrongful death. But did the police really kill Michael Vann Hubbard?

At Gospel Mission, we see all sorts of activity going on in the Hastings and Carrall area, and we hear a lot of chatter about how the police are "hassling" the homeless. It's also been in the papers and on the air. The advent of the winter Olympics is the latest "hook" for this sort of talk -- that the police are going to be turning up the heat on the poor and destitute so that the area looks good in time for us to "welcome the world". (I do recall that, during the 2006 World Junior Hockey Championships, there was a sign taped to the dashboard of the shuttle vehicles that took media and officials from the Westin Bayshore to Pacific Coliseum, reminding drivers NOT to go via Hastings and Main. They had to go over the Georgia Viaduct, take Prior/Venables to Victoria and then cut down to Hastings and out to the PNE.)

One hot rumour has the homeless being invited to a "free lunch", then herded onto buses and, before you can say "concentration camp", whisked away to an undisclosed location in the Interior.

"They're ticketing people for jaywalking! They're hassling people for loitering!" That's the kind of shrill warning we get from the Pivot Legal Society and its activist lawyers, taking a quantum leap of logic to show it's proof that the police are targeting "the homeless". Well, this just in: jaywalking and loitering are illegal. So is possession of stolen property -- which includes shopping carts, and seeing the number of shopping carts being pushed around the DTES tells me the cops are not exactly enforcing the letter of the law on that one (I can only imagine the screams from PLS and its ilk if they did!).

Want to know how to keep from being hassled by police? Don't break the law. What's more, the Word of God tells us we have to obey the law, no matter how unjust we think it is (I Peter 2:13-23), and God will bless us for it.

But the activists on the DTES have an agenda that isn't necessarily to bless the poor and homeless: they'd rather fight "the man" than Behold The Man. With all their ravings, is it any wonder that people in the area don't trust the police and that someone challenged by police officers would be so paranoid that he would pull a knife rather than comply?

Who really killed Michael Vann Hubbard? The police officer who pulled the trigger? Or whoever planted the seeds of paranoia?