Inside Vancouver
The Watchers
By Darcy Smith published Dec 1, 2009
With an extra 16,000 security officers here for the 2010 Olympic Games,
the Legal Observers will be aiming to protect civil rights
It’s a chilly Sunday in the Britannia Community Centre on Commercial Drive—what Micheal Vonn, policy director for the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, calls the heart of “No Games” country. Some 40 volunteers are exchanging nervous pleasantries and joking that the second-storey room is hard to find for a reason. “Are we under no-signage restrictions already?” a latecomer asks.
Most of the participants at this Legal Observers training session aren’t career activists, Vonn says. “But it’s a nice fit for people who would just like to stand up for democratic space for everybody at such a public event.” She’s referring to the 2010 Games, when the Observers—the first group of laypeople to supervise Olympic security—will act as neutral, passive witness: “It’s an oversight,” she explains. “A citizen-participation thing.”
Maria Russell, a chemist in food safety, likes the title of Legal Observer, and the“political action that goes with it.” Kevin Abrahams, of the Haida Nation, believes that First Nations people are unfairly represented in all the wrong areas: jail, addiction, poverty. He’s been bothered by the police because of his race, he says, and he doesn’t have much faith in the law. “I’d like to do my best to see it’s upheld.”
Caroline Price, a lawyer with Peck and Company volunteering for the day, wears a T-shirt that reads “East Van: Where the Weak Are Killed and Eaten.” She explains that the Legal Observers program, a joint venture between Pivot and the BCCLA, will educate volunteers on their civil liberties while they act as deterrents to rights abuses and, in the worst case, misconduct by police and other security forces during the 2010 Games. A hundred volunteers will don orange T-shirts and walk the streets with notepads, audio, and video equipment. The Legal Observers will be deployed anywhere the civil-liberties association thinks they’ll be useful. This includes security checkpoints, venues, and organized protests. On a waiver, volunteers tick off their “risk tolerance” level. The form notes that the BCCLA cannot guarantee “zero risk.”
John Richardson, head of Pivot Legal, warns that volunteers may be targeted, harassed, and even arrested by police. He says the program is already having an impact on the plans of the Integrated Security Unit (ISU), the group tasked with overseeing the RCMP and municipal officers who will patrol the Games. “The presence of Observers will place constraints on how freely the military and police might act, which is good news for the Charter of Rights.”
The group role-plays scenarios. An officer roughs up and arrests a young protestor: what did you notice? An overzealous observer gets confrontational with the police: what should you do differently?
