Monday Magazine - Feb 16-22, 2006

Trash, Security and Videotape
Local filmmaker documents confrontation as police push to protect dumpster
 
By Andrew MacLeod

A few seconds into the video, a police car pulls up to a dumpster outside of Food Country in Cook Street village. A voice says, "Here we go, we've got action."

The voice, captured on a wireless microphone, belongs to one of the two homeless men - Nick and Jason - inside the dumpster. They're looking for food.

Over the next six minutes, the two officers, supported by two private security guards in street clothes, remove the men from the dumpster, arrest them and search the area. They also arrest a third person, Andrew Aisnley, who is filming the action from a van across the street from the dumpster.

More than three weeks later, the police are still holding a camera confiscated at the scene. "They're holding the camera I think to prevent me from taping them more," says Ainsley. "There should be no issue with someone standing by documenting them. That shouldn't be a crime at all...I assume they just want to make sure when they arrest people for crimes the public wouldn't agree with, they want the cameras off."

The night the police took Ainsley's camera, however, there was another camera rolling that they didn't take. That camera's footage shows that both the cops on the scene appear to take the situation at the dumpster very seriously. At one point, the male officer grabs the arm of the first man to come out of the dumpster, twists it high behind the man's back, and forces him to the ground.

A few seconds later the second man comes out of the dumpster and asks, "What are you doing to my friend?" The female officer replies, "Same thing we're going to do to you. Let's go."

When the second man volunteers that he has a knife and removes it from his pocket, the male officer says, "Don't fucking play around with needles." After the blade has been dropped, the officer shoves the man.

But the most telling part of the video is the dialogue between one of the homeless men and one of the security guards:

"I'm really hungry."
"That's too bad. Streetlink offers free meals every day."
"I don't eat the food they serve."
"It's your choice. You don't eat the food here either. You know they pour bleach on their food in here?"
"How do you know that?"
"Because we're hired by the management to protect this. It's private property."
"You security?"
"Yes I am."
"Why are you dressed in a motorcycle jacket?"
"Because we're undercover security."

The six minute video - available along with a couple other short films at the website loveandfearlessness.com to anyone with a high-speed internet connection - is the latest offering from Ainsley, who last year produced a video about David Arthur Johnston's fight to be allowed to sleep on the grounds of St Ann's Academy. Ainsley sees the battle over the dumpster as part of the same problem as Johnston's, because an increasing number of people are finding that the steps they're taking to meet their basic needs, eating and sleeping, have become illegal. The same goes for people who have nowhere to go during the day who get charged under loitering laws.

All three problems, says Ainsley, stem from poverty. And more of our resources as a community - the city just hired six new police officers at a cost of $2.2 million a year, he says - are being poured into dealing with these symptoms.

The dumpster conflict at Food Country seems to have been escalating for a couple months. On January 18, two nights before the video was made, divers at dumpster had a run-in with private security officers, leading Ainsley to return on the 20th with two video cameras rolling in a van parked across the street.

He says he hopes people will get a chance to see the video and consider what it has to say about how we treat people who are hungry and homeless. " I hope they'll be appalled at one of two things. Either the treatment of poor people, or at least the waste of resources."
 
With the police still holding his camera, he also hopes there'll be public affirmation of his right to film what police officers do, as long as he isn't getting in their way. "There should be still be the right to have independent media."
 
He adds, "To me it seems like poisoning food is a much more serious crime than videotaping someone taking food out of a dumpster."
 
Calls to the Victoria police department's watch commander, the usual media contact, were not returned. Chief Paul Battershill agreed to an interview, but was unavailable until after deadline.
 
Asked why Food Country is keeping people out of the dumpster, store manager Mike Parr says, "Because they make a mess. Because we've actually had human feces in there." He adds that hypodermic needles have also been found in the dumpster.
 
The area is clearly marked with "no trespassing" signs, Parr says. "It is our property and it is marked 'no trespassing.' They have no business being in there."
 
After the store got the police involved the situation has improved, he says. "Since the police have taken a little more aggressive approach it's helped...We're asking people to respect our property, not to violate it. It's not our desire to be aggressive about things but we really have to protect our property. It really is unpleasant to clean that kind of mess up on a regular basis."
 
But what about the people going hungry? If the store considers the food to be garbage, why not let people take it? "There are programs like the Upper Room that are geared up and established to help people like that," he says.
 
Parr says he's only been at Food Country for a couple of months, and he isn't sure if there have been attempts in the past to distribute waste from the store to local food banks. However, he knows from experience at other stores that it can be difficult to separate the edible from the inedible, and to store it until the food bank has a chance to pick it up. "It's not quite as simple as it sounds."
 
Parr says the store is not contaminating food on purpose. "Obviously we dump stuff in there when it gets broken," he says. "We get shipped stuff thats broken sometimes and that's where it goes."
 
Ainsley says while there will always be a few people who make a mess, most dumpster divers are careful to keep an area clean so they won't lose access. At Food Country, he says, he seldom saw a mess. "I think that it was a relatively clean dumpster. I don't think it's a messy spot. My friends who have dumpster dived there say they've never seen needles in the dumpster or feces."
 
If feces is the problem, he says, a better approach than sending the police would be for the city to provide more public washrooms. That kind of approach would likely go a lot further to improving the situation for people living on Victoria's streets, and alleviating tensions with businesses like Food Country. "They need a bit of love, just compassion anyway," he says. When people who are hungry are intimidated and criminalized for taking what a store considers garbage, he says, it will do nothing but create more alienation and more anger.
 
"We're not helping ourselves by locking them up and coming down hard."