A pickup truck that was once the property of a cocaine dealer is now rolling in another direction.
With the Ford F-350’s former owner serving time in prison, representatives from the West Vancouver Police Department put in an application to keep the vehicle from going up for auction.
The department wanted to find a better use from the truck, explained WVPD spokesman Const. Jeff Palmer. After a mechanical inspection was complete, the truck was pronounced “fit for duty,” Palmer noted.
However, they weren’t quite ready to put the rubber to the road, according to Palmer.
“It wasn’t quite acceptable for us to say, ‘We’ll just take a drug trafficker’s truck and start driving it around into the First Nations communities we serve,’” he explained. “We wanted to really pay strong respect to some of the ancestral ceremony.”
In the interest of showing that respect, the pickup truck was recently festooned with First Nations artwork and anti-gang decals before being cleansed at “traditional First Nations ceremony” featuring members of the Squamish Nation.
Students from Gleneagles elementary were on hand to see the truck serve its role as a: “rolling billboard aimed at discouraging youth from gang and criminal activity,” according to a WVPD release.
The vehicle, known as Hiyi Ulanch or Big Orange, will tow the WVPD canoe to events “supporting outreach to youth and First Nations,” according to the release.
“There’s a lot of embedded messages with a program like this,” Palmer said. “It’s a message for youth to contemplate the costs of a criminal lifestyle.”
While the truck is a cautionary tale for potential criminals, it’s also meant to foster a stronger relationship with the police and “the First Nations that we serve and patrol,” Palmer said.
The cleansing ceremony served as an in-class lesson for Gleneagles students to help them understand one of the traditions of the Squamish Nation.
“We were glad we were able to turn this vehicle into an opportunity to educate the kids about First Nations that were in this area for many generations before Europeans got here,” he said.
