Paul Teichroeb: Busted

Sue Dritmanis

| December 1, 2005

Paul Teichroeb, chief licence inspector for the City of Vancouver.

What’s the worst thing that could happen if, while running your business, you searched for a few ‘efficiencies,’ maybe found a cheaper ‘supplier’ of goods, ignored some of the more annoying regulations or took just a few extra risks with your workers?
You could end up talking to this guy.

FOILED. BY A FIVE-POUND BLOCK OF BLACK-MARKET MOZZARELLA

It’s happened to more than one unscrupulous pizza joint owner in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Buying shoplifted cheese from a drug addict desperate for a fix is irresistibly cheap. Losing a business license for three months is not.

The catalogue of small-business-owner bad behaviour – the kind that results in a padlock on the door and/or punishingly severe financial penalties such as a licence suspension – is no slim volume. It includes more than criminal activity, health infractions and tax evasion. Are businesses strong-arming their customers with high-pressure sales tactics? Are they endangering their employees? Selling cigarettes to minors? Enforcing the rules and regulations falls to a small army of inspectors, investigators, auditors and sundry control officers. In many cases, they’re responding to a complaint. Sometimes they just follow their noses. Here’s a look at a few of B.C.’s busiest bloodhounds:

DIRTY DEEDS DONE DIRT CHEAP

Back to the mozzarella story. Recalls Paul Teichroeb, chief licence inspector for the City of Vancouver, “We had a pizza place in the downtown eastside that was basically making all their pizzas with stolen cheese. They were, in a way, hiring people to steal because on the street everyone knew they’d pay $2 for a $10 block of mozzarella.” A steady supply of cut-price mozzarella, usually lifted from a local Safeway, ensured that the shop owners could undercut their competition with 99-cent slices of pie that cost only pennies to produce. The gig was up after police followed a couple of cheese thieves from the grocery store to the pizza outlet.

In 2003 the city slapped a three-month licence suspension on Adham Abdullah, owner of Adam’s Pizza at 151 East Hastings. He appealed the ruling, and at a subsequent hearing at City Hall, civic lawyer Catherine Kinahan presented an armload of uncomplimentary reports from the health, police and licence inspector’s office, not to mention six witnesses to support allegations “that a large amount of stolen cheese had been found on the premises,” posing both “a serious health risk” and undermining legitimate vendors in the area. The witnesses included Vancouver Police Sgt. Doug Fisher of the anti-fencing unit, senior health inspector Richard Taki of the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and Grant Hardman, director of security for Canada Safeway. Abdullah’s wife represented him at the hearing and agreed that the business had not been properly managed. She then pleaded for a shorter suspension, citing family hardship and her belief that other shops in the area guilty of the same behaviour had received lighter penalties. Her claims were rejected.

There are currently about 43,000 licensed businesses in the city of Vancouver, and Teichroeb anticipates that in 2005, 40 to 50 of them will be revoked or suspended – for anywhere from a day to the rest of the year. Hundreds more will receive warning letters or be issued compliance orders regarding improper signage, parking violations, offensive odours and more serious contraventions.

In April, a Richmond massage parlour, Holiday Body Care, was shut down for failing to require masseuses to wear proper clothing. Or, in this case, any clothing at all.

“On occasion [we’ll shut down] something like a hotel or rooming house, more often than not in the downtown eastside,” he says. But most of the culprits are small fry, among them rental property owners, retailers, restaurateurs, pawnbrokers, escort-service operators and those whose businesses belong to the optimistically named ‘health enhancement’ category, i.e., body rub salons, reflexology clinics and the like. (In April of this year, a Richmond massage parlour, Holiday Body Care, was shut down for 30 days for numerous bylaw contraventions including failing to require masseuses to wear proper clothing. Or, in this case, any clothing at all.)

“We are having difficulty enforcing. Additional inspectors would help,” Teichroeb admits. “More and more of the inspectors’ time is being taken up with problem premises and the poor maintenance of those premises.”

Depending upon the circumstances – and in large measure, to what degree the business is negatively impacting the neighbourhood – Teichroeb’s team of 28 inspectors will target particular “problem locations.” Inspections of those sites may occur on a scheduled or drop-in basis, and can be triggered by a phone call to City Hall from a concerned citizen or the Vancouver Police Dept.’s problem-premise coordinator.

Violations by home-based businesses are the most difficult to track. Inspectors must give notice before entering a private home, giving the owner time to tidy up any incriminating evidence. In Vancouver, where each inspector is assigned his or her own district to police, nothing beats a years-old familiarity with a neighbourhood when it comes to sniffing out trouble. For instance, why did Joe X., who purchased a residential business licence in 2004, not renew for 2005? A note on file for the home reveals a noise complaint by a nearby resident regarding “incessant hammering.” In the back lane, the trash cans are overflowing with sawdust and empty tins of varnish.
By all appearances, Joe’s carpentry venture is alive and well. After further verification by the property inspector, Joe is given a few days’ notice to cease work or eventually answer to a court injunction.

City inspectors are granted much freer access to commercial businesses, which makes gathering evidence easier. Storage units can be opened, furniture and appliances moved, photos taken, and where multiple and recurring bylaw breaches are noted, Teichroeb will call for a coordinated inspection. Reminiscent of The Untouchables, except with clipboards, flashlights and thermometers substituting for Tommy sub-machine guns, a determined group of health, property, building and fire-safety inspectors – sometimes joined by a VPD officer – will descend on a business to inventory its failings.

In July, Mother India Foods in North Vancouver was shut by a VCH inspector who observed “Spices infested with grain beetles… Premises filthy! Equipment, floors, walls, microwaves, shelves, etc. covered in grease and food debris”

“If it’s a serious life safety issue,” Teichroeb says, “we have the authority to ask BC Hydro to cut power to the building. We do it sometimes on rental housing, or with a grow-op.” In mid-September, city staff on a routine safety check suspected they’d stumbled on a crystal meth lab when they found two propane tanks in the basement of the Pender Hotel. Firefighters were summoned – several of whom were overcome by noxious fumes emanating from the building – which prompted the arrival of a Hazmat team and a complete evacuation of the tenants. No lab was found and accommodations on the upper floors of the hotel, whose street-level retail operation was closed by the city last June, remain open.

Typically, the worst offenders are invited to meet with Teichroeb or his associates at City Hall, where they are warned that their licences are in jeopardy. “They will quite often try to sell the business at that point,” he says, “which kicks in the process of looking at new applicants. It’s not unusual for somebody already connected with the business to pretend that they’re the new owners. So we run a criminal background check, ask them to submit a business plan and tell us who is going to be employed. We might get two or three people coming in for the same business, trying to convince us they’re legitimate operators. But they don’t even know how much they’re buying it for. And we’ll just say, ‘Sorry, this isn’t going to cut it.’ ”