COPS LOSING FIGHT TO SHUT DRUG DENS

If you run a drug house in Calgary, the odds are you'll get a speeding
ticket before you'll be busted for dope.

Calgary citizens have given the addresses of more than 200 suspected
crack houses, pot-growing operations and meth-amphetamine labs to city
police.

But most of those tips have yet to be acted on. "We can't get to
them," Calgary Police Service Insp. Joan McCallum of the organized
crime unit told the Sun.

"Our resources are limited and we don't have time to be proactive when
we're reacting to and putting out other fires.

"It's frustrating in the sense I don't think we're serving the
communities' needs, we're not fulfilling their expectations."

In just about every imaginable crime -- from break and enters to armed
robberies to murder -- drugs can be found as the root problem. But
police aren't sitting on their behinds while the drug producers and
dealers merrily push their poison, said the head of the city's drug
unit.

Last year, police in the southern Alberta received about 2,500 tips
involving suspected drug operations.

"Our drug unit got involved in 700 of those," said Staff Sgt. Paul
LaVenture of the 20-member unit.

But, he said officers can't act on a single tip where there's no
concrete proof of illicit deals.

"We're not going to eradicate drugs, that's not going to happen,"
LaVenture said.

"It's not going away, but we have to keep doing what we are right
now."

That's a message Calgary's top cop is going to make loud and clear to
city council next month during the budget finalization process when he
asks for more money to battle the city's growing drug problem.

"It's supply and demand and drug dealers are making money here and
that upsets me," Chief Jack Beaton said.

"I wish we had more people," he sighed. "But the fact is, if we had 30
more people, we'd still be busy."