By David P. Ball
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A campaigner with Pivot Legal Society is decrying recent revelations that a major Vancouver real estate developer donated $1 million to the Vancouver Police Department's charitable arm, with the express hope it would be used for police work in the Downtown Eastside.

Peter Wall, of Wall Financial Group, was reported to have donated the money to the Vancouver Police Foundation, according to the Globe and Mail, and wanted it targeted to the VPD's community policing centres, which are disproportionately in and near the DTES.

The charitable foundation insists that it sets no priorities for Vancouver police operations, but simply helps fundraise for equipment and, in its mission statement, "crime prevention programs that are above and beyond the annual operating budget of the Vancouver Police Department."

But Meenakshi Mannoe, criminalization and police campaigner with Pivot Legal Society, said it's beyond infuriating that Wall and wealthy citizens like him have the option of influencing policing in any way in the city — while groups like hers representing low-income residents can only resort to lining up to speak at City Council and police board meetings, going to the media, or filing official complaints.

Wall, in a statement to the Globe, said he was frustrated by the City of Vancouver's strategies for responding to both the homelessness crisis, and the mental health and addictions crisis — particularly what he termed a failed harm reduction approach which he inaccurately described as allowing adults and youth to use drugs that "kill them" in safe consumption sites. (In fact, no one has yet ever died in a safe consumption site from drug overdose).