i agree completely other areas of the sex industry where workers could choose work within their physical boundaries are disappearing not because of lack of interest but because of the police and municipaities considering exotic dancing a reasonable casualty in their war on "org crime".
i don't know if you guys remember this but the VPD were going into the show lounges 20 at a time in uniform asking all patrons for ID and harassing dancers
it was dirty....
any way here's what i wrote the police board and go out and support your local strip club IMMEDIATELY!!LOL

they give you 5 mins to speak as a delegation the police board, boy can i talk fast!!!
Re: Escalation in enforcement against Organized Crime-
Sept 19, 2007
To Whom It May Concern:
My name is Susan Davis and I’ve been a sex worker for 21 yeas from coast to coast and in all levels of the trade. I am a member of the BCCEC which is a consort of current and former sex workers who fight for human rights and labor standards for sex workers.
During the advocacy and media work that I do, one question consistently comes up. How did the situation become as dangerous as it is? In an effort answer this question a group of sex workers including my self set out to discover what had happened at least on a local level, to create the dangerous environment sex workers in the DTES face every day. We learned how a brief period of moral zeal known as social gospel had lead to prohibition and the beginnings of the cultural divide that the so called “underground “ and community at large live with today.
The religious overtones of this time have defined every decision made around this difficult issue and still plague sex workers ability to organize to this day.
How can we over come this barrier?
During the Living in Community Project it became clear that sex workers needed a safe place to work and communities were no longer willing to tolerate the residual mess of the industry, meaning condoms and needles, or the visible violence and sexual activity taking place around them.
We need to bring the trade in off of the street.
The history project shows us how local, provincial and federal governments have systematically removed all safe work options for sex workers.
During the 1920’s and all the way up to the 1960’s, sex workers from all aspects of the trade worked together in what were then known as “Supper Clubs”. Dancers performed complex routines and escorts were available to have diner and keep you company for the night, cigarette girls, bartenders… all working together under one roof within their own personal physical boundaries, a community.
In 1973, the Penthouse Show Lounge was charged with living off the avails of prostitution and our community was divided down the middle. This action had made all supper club owners unwilling to work with sex workers and this safe stabile work environment was lost. The street trade in Vancouver shot up that year and the first recorded murder of a sex worker took place, a direct result of this action.
The law revisions of 1985 had an equally disastrous effect increasing the mortality rate of Vancouver sex workers by 500%.
In the early 1990’s sex workers could rent hotels rooms in the DTES by the hour and have a safe place to work. The city threatened the hotel owners with criminal prosecution and the loss of their businesses making them no longer willing to do business with us either, another safe option lost.
Is it any wonder a street trade exists? The only place left to work was the isolated industrial areas of the east end or crab. 1990 was the year that workers really began to go missing at an incredible rate from the DTES.
Recently, health enhancement center raids, the closure of 17 show lounges in the lower mainland, and a training video for hotel staff to identify sex workers have once again compromised the safety of adult sex workers in Vancouver. The officers in charge of these actions have expressed that adult industry workers are seen as a reasonable casualty in their efforts to stabilize youth or de-stabilize organized crime. This is unacceptable. We are human beings and deserve the same protection and consideration as other citizens enjoy.
These actions have direct impact on the lives of industry workers. I now have exotic dancers who want to know how they can work safely as escorts. They have had to choose to violate their physical boundaries and engage in an area of the industry which makes them uncomfortable; dancers don’t want to be escorts. After the release of the training video for hotel staff on the national news I received a phone call from a young man claiming to be a hotel doorman. He wanted to send customers my way for a $30.00 cut of each call. He also wanted to come to sample the merchandise for free before sending me any calls. This just demonstrates how giving someone power over sex workers leads to them taking advantage. If we can’t trust police officers and RCMP officers to resist the temptation, how will a hotel doorman or janitor?
The recent murder of an indoor worker in Kitsalano has once again put the spot light on the safety of sex industry workers. As a community, sex industry workers are mobilizing and more politically aware. We as a community have decided that the workers in the east end are dying the fastest and there fore must be saved first. This is a hard decision when everyone’s safety and stability is at risk but none the less, this is our only option.
You may have read in the news recently about cooperatively run brothels in Victoria and Vancouver. The Vancouver collective of sex workers in the east end have been working hard and we will be officially incorporated as a Cooperative sometime in November. This cooperative will be the “umbrella” for a number os sex worker community development activities. An art collective, a coop publishing company, a coop catering company and of course the controversial cooperatively run safe work site.
It is not our intention to violate the law or put the VPD in a position where you are forced to arrest us. We will NOT open a safe work site without a special exemption or amnesty for the federal government. We have done a preliminary scan of how this might be accomplished and it seems that in fact we may be able to do it through legal channels. The site would be owned and operated by the workers who access the site. They could vote on what to do with any profits and benefit from mentoring and capacity building opportunities in all aspects of running the cooperative. The workers involved in the development of our cooperative had many suggestions for what to do with any profits from the cooperative business activities. One example which never fails to move me was the wish to create a scholarship fund for the children of dead sex workers. We will need community and police support for this initiative.
The VPD presented itself at the International Harm Reduction Conference as a Harm reduction police force but seems to have misinterpreted the fundamental principles of this approach which is to engage the community affected, not to protect the community at large from us. That is not to say that this department isn’t trying to employ different methods and reduce harm to the sex worker community. I personally have trained almost 200 new recruits and was asked to join the Diversity Advisory Committee to the Chief Constable, the first time sex workers have been acknowledged as a distinct community and culture by this department. I attended 2 DAC meetings with one of my peers and we slowly began to see the potential of the DAC for real trust building between our community and the VPD. We were asked to take part in the ride along program and were excited to agree. Unfortunately my friend’s extensive criminal history although from 15years previous had made her ineligible and she was kicked out of the police car after just 45 min.’s.
The DAC mandate asks sex workers to lend their credibility within their community to the VPD in an effort to restore trust in the department and open up communication with us but where is this department’s trust in us? Somehow we must meet half way. We then received an e-mail stating that the issues facing sex industry workers were too broad for the DAC and that it might be better to strike a working group. We were told the VPD DAC member would enquire with PIVOT legal society on how to start such a group. I politely reminded them that the city had struck a working group to the tune of $500,000 in Living in Community and that the police had been at the table. Well, at least for the first 2 ½ years. Kash Heed was supposed to replace John Mackay on the committee but apparently didn’t consider it a high priority.
The first meetings of this working group are scheduled to begin this week and thankfully we have been included right from the beginning and will have some input as to who should be involved in the committee. This will be an East End working group and we hope to include voices from all areas of the sex industry and the community itself in order to appropriately address enforcement issues facing us. We hold up great hope for this action and pray that some communication between the VPD and the sex industry will stem the harms caused by enforcement in the past.
As the VPD prepares another attack on so called organized crime we are bracing ourselves for the inevitable impact of this war on our lives. Yes, war. We now know this department considers us reasonable casualties in this war and are preparing once again for the harms that will undoubtedly follow.
The new Police Chief stated in the media after my last presentation that sex work is illegal. It scares me a little that the new Chief has such a lack of knowledge of the criminal code. Prostitution is NOT illegal. Being an Exotic Dancer is NOT illegal. Working in the Porn industry is NOT illegal. Being a bartender or bouncer in an Exotic show lounge is NOT illegal. Being a business owner and providing safe work spaces for sex industry workers is NOT illegal.
However, sexual harassment and sexual assault are illegal. The complaints we received about the Organized Crime Task Force included these things although the victim’s were not willing to come forward and pursue criminal charges, it’s not difficult to see why. It was explained to me that the VPD purposely recruit ”tough guys” for this task force because the gangsters are tough guys, fair enough. Does this justify the actions of this group of VPD thugs during their last efforts? What happened to serve and protect?
PLEASE, consider any actions you approve as a board carefully and be aware of the far reaching effects these actions will have. PLEASE, work with us. No one else needs to die or be harmed during or as a result of VPD operations.
Thank you,
Sincerely,
Susan Davis
BCCEC
(604)671-2345