http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/story/2602
 
February 4, 2010
Police to receive "Olympic Legacies"
Vancouver, Richmond police departments to move into Games related digs
 
by Dawn Paley 
 
 
As soon as the 2010 Olympic Games are over, the Vancouver Police
Department will be moving in to a the facility now occupied by the
Vancouver Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (VANOC). The Richmond
Police Department will be taking over the headquarters of the Integrated
Security Unit, a 2010 Olympics specific police unit which comprises the
RCMP, the VPD and RPD, and the Canadian Forces.
 
“This move has been long anticipated and we are very pleased that the
timing was such that our new building will be a valuable and cost
efficient legacy of the 2010 Winter Games,” said VPD Chief Constable Jim
Chu in a January 18 press release.
 
The move to reward police with new office space doesn't surprise critics
of the Games.
 
"It's very appropriate that the police would move into the VANOC
headquarters, since that's their little puppet masters for the duration of
this Olympic regime that they've imposed on the city," said Gord Hill, the
editor of no2010.com and member of the Olympics Resistance Network.
 
"They also got other facilities that they have now, including the Force
Options Training Center near Clark Drive and First Avenue, so you see a
real expansion of the police forces here in the city, as a result of the
Olympic security budget that they put in place," said Hill. The Force
Options Training Center is almost complete and will be ready for 2010.
 
Chris Shaw from 2010 Watch told the Vancouver Media Co-op that rewarding
police with new equipment and new offices paid for by taxpayers was
typical of the Olympics.
 
"[International Olympic Committee President] Jaques Rogge was very clear
about this, he said you get a 'Security Legacy' and he's exactly right,
that what you get," said Shaw. "Unfortunately most of us don't want that."
 
Both the federal government and the City of Vancouver have prioritized the
upgrading of police facilities over the provision of other services in
these difficult financial times. The feds will contribute $5 million to
the move, and the City will contribute $10 million.
 
The idea that the 2010 Olympics would leave a positive legacy for
Vancouverites, specifically for poor people in this city, has long been
forgotten.
 
In addition to the boost for local police, tangible Olympic legacies for
Vancouver will go to real estate developers like Bob Rennie, who developed
and is marketing the 2010 athletes village through his company Rennie
Marketing Systems, and to the corporations that got in on the flurry of
Olympic spending while the getting was good.

Dawn Paley, The Dominion