Upper Room Mission targets drugs

By roger knox Morning Star Staff Mar 14 2007 http://www.vernonmorningstar.com/

Coming under intense scrutiny and criticism over the last week, the Upper Room Mission is taking action. The mission’s board of directors has established a risk management committee, whose role is to talk to various groups in the City of Vernon to discuss the mission. “Our job is to ask each party involved what they would like to see from the Upper Room Mission,” said Mike Buffie, a local adjustor who is part of the three-member committee. He’s joined by attorney Ed Wooley, and Terri Jones, assistant to Okanagan Shuswap Conservative Colin Mayes.

Work has already begun on the project, with the committee having spoken to a number of groups on its list. The list includes the city, Vernon Fire Department, RCMP, community policing, safe communities unit, Downtown Vernon Association, People Place, and the Upper Room Mission’s board and staff. “We’re already halfway through the list,” said Buffie. Once compiled, the committee will take the wish lists of the groups, compile them, analyze them and then release a report on its findings. Buffie expects the entire process to last less than two weeks. “We have to fix this problem. We want everybody to understand that the mission provides a lot of good in the community.”

The mission area has come under fire after Vernon RCMP announced that they had arrested 19 people in a pair of undercover drug stings, and that the first five people arrested were all caught making deals at the Upper Room Mission. Police also stated that a member of their safe communities unit observed, on two different occasions, nearly 50 drug transactions at the mission. The member also stated that some of the people showing up were high school students, some under the age of 16. Vernon’s top cop, Insp. Steve McVarnock, referred to the mission’s home becoming “somewhat like Hastings Street on Vancouver’s downtown Eastside,” and called drug use at the mission “an epidemic.”