Despite the scrapping of the BC drug decriminalisation program, Victoria Police Chief Fiona Wilson says not to expect this to lead to an increase of drug-related arrests.“The reality is the police aren’t going into people’s private residences to arrest them for simple possession because they’re using illicit drugs inside that private residence. We don’t have the grounds to do that,” she said in an interview Thursday.Wilson also said supervised consumption sites will also remain without police interference. “We wouldn’t be going into a supervised consumption site to arrest people for consuming illicit drugs. So the rare circumstance where the (current) exemption would still impact police is indeed very, very, very rare.”.Wilson, who was the deputy chief of the Vancouver Police before her current role, was a supporter of the decriminalisation project saying in that she supported the decriminalisation of personal possession of small amounts of illicit drug.However, she has changed her stance on this, admitting that the decriminalisation pilot did not attain the outcome she thought it would have."...We also have to have the courage to stand up and say when something is not working, and that’s what happened with decriminalisation here in British Columbia," said Wilson..Wilson says that decriminalisation actually increased incidents of public consumption in which officers were then unable to intercede. “We had situations where someone might be standing at a bus shelter with a bunch of kids on their way to school and, you know, openly smoking crack cocaine,” said Wilson. “In a situation like that, because bus shelters were not part of exceptions to the exemption, police had no lawful authority in the absence of any other criminal behaviour to even approach that person.”Despite this admission Wilson says that there will still be few cases in which police will have the legal authority to arrest someone for drug use.
