AGAINST THE LAW CALGARY

Visiting Calgary for the first time in years, Curtis Sliwa hardly
recognized the place. The New York founder of the Guardian Angels was
last here in the early Nineties, lecturing at a local college. He
remembers a "few drunks downtown, some homeless. Nothing that
disturbing." Back again last spring, Mr. Sliwa says what he witnessed
was "alarming to say the least." At downtown's LRT stations were "all
kinds of cretins with chromosome damage hanging around, verbally
harassing people." Along the river, "people were shooting up and
smoking crack openly, beaming themselves up to Scotty," he says. In
working-class Forest Lawn, dealers and prostitutes loitered in broad
daylight. "I was saying, 'My God, this was like a throwback to New
York City before Rudolph Giuliani cleaned it up.'"

Invited to set up a chapter by the fed-up citizenry, Mr. Sliwa showed
his hosts, and the news cameras following him, how Guardian Angels do
things. "I was literally taking needles out of people's arms," he says.

He snatched a crack pipe out of one woman's hands and stomped on it
before confiscating her box cutter. "People were like, 'Oh yeah!
That's what we need!,'" he recalls. Local poverty activists, however,
were outraged. "They said 'This is barbarian! You can't do this. This
is Canada!'"

Steve Saretsky, owner of Dogcity Daycare and Dogwash, who, with his
wife Janet, organized Calgary's eight-person chapter, promised they
would not be using such "American tactics"-- no confiscations; no
citizens' arrests. But throughout the city, historically unflappable
Calgarians, like the Sarestkys, are growing agitated watching their
once solidly law-and-order society come rapidly undone.

"You call the cops and tell them they're drinking or getting high over
here," vents one frustrated Beltline cafe owner, scowling over his
patio at what appears to be a drug exchange happening down the block.
"And they say, 'So, why are you calling?' It's like Vancouver
suddenly, where this stuff is considered okay."

Some aldermen admit that the growing perception among voters that the
city is taking these things lightly is adding up to a big political
problem. Soft on crime is not a campaign slogan that will sell in
conservative Calgary at municipal election time in October. And a
Leger Marketing poll last year had 98% of residents saying the city
isn't devoting enough resources behind improving downtown safety.

The Angels hope its presence at least makes citizens feel safer in an
increasingly decaying downtown. While violent crime rates remain
stable or have dropped, street robberies in the first quarter of this
year, show a 24% increase from two years ago. Car thefts have doubled
over the same period, while mischief and commercial robberies are up
10%. Calgarians may be as physically safe as before the boom, but
deteriorating urban conditions don't make them feel that way. Many
worry that on the way to becoming one of North America's big cities,
Calgary could end up like Detroit, not San Diego.

"City Council very much wants to see an improvement, but it really
doesn't know how to bring it about," says Alderman Madeleine King. "I
would dearly love to see us try the New York model, which was based on
the Broken Windows theory, but to achieve that, you need to have close
co-operation with the mayor and the chief of police and a real
determination to bring about change."

The biggest innovation in crime-fighting strategy in decades, Broken
Windows holds that nonchalant attitudes to minor crimes engenders
climates where criminals feel comfortable committing larger ones, such
as robbery, murder. Used with remarkable success by former mayor Rudy
Giuliani in a mid-'90s cleanup of New York, cops soon discovered that
busting small offences helped solve larger ones.

Calgary's bylaw head, Bill Bruce, says the city subscribes to Broken
Windows, but "without the heavy-handed enforcement" practised in the
States. But a downtown stroll suggests that ingredient may be the
critical one for keeping areas from descending into decrepitude. In
the east end, along Stephen Avenue, on Olympic Plaza or no-go-zones
like Needle Park or "Crack Cul de Sac," drugs and vagrancy are in your
face, not least in the needle disposal bins on the core's skeeviest
corners.

Citizens clamour for City Hall to do something, but unlike New York,
criminal laws are written in Ottawa (in the U.S., they come from the
state) and Alberta's cities have minimal power over their own police
forces. Police here answer to an independent commission, and the
Police Act blocks municipal officials from heading up or controlling a
majority of the board.

"When I find mayors and localities that have no control [over police],
I roll my eyes," says George Kelling, the Rutgers University professor
who helped develop the Broken Windows theory. "I can't see how they're
going to get anyplace."

Officers here are stretched thin: Calgary has one officer for every
645 residents; in Toronto the ratio is 1:481 and in New York, 1:217.
When they do bust smaller infractions, they feel hamstrung by strict
search and seizure laws and, says Ms. King, "there is too much
paperwork involved [and] they feel the justice system is not working
in collaboration with them so people end up back out on the streets in
a very, very short period of time."

In November, City Council took a page from the book of Saskatoon's Don
Atchison, who Rick Mercer dubbed "Canada's Craziest Mayor," for a
Broken Windows-style crackdown on public spitting, defecating and
urinating. Saskatoon's results have been encouraging. But Mr.
Atchison's government-- unlike Calgary's--controls the police
commission and has dedicated some officers exclusively to low-level
crime enforcement. In addition to public excretion, bylaw officers can
ticket for swearing in public, carrying a knife, fighting, and putting
feet on public benches. But the city's 32 enforcers, who punch out at
10 p.m., have issued "a handful" of tickets since November, when the
new rules took effect, Mr. Bruce says. Police, who used the laws
heavily during some short-lived NHL playoff "Red Mile" revelry, have
since refocused on bigger priorities.

With police not answerable to city representatives, officers
frustrated by a system that goes "gentle on the bad people," and
federal laws "based on the notion that all Canadians should live under
the same system and local differences should not exist," Simon Fraser
University criminologist Gary Mauser says Calgary faces hurdles in
tailoring specific solutions to cleaning up crime. To change laws and
court interpretations, they must go through Ottawa. To alter how
police commissions operate, through the province. All told, it could
take an extremely tall political order just to get a few crack-heads
and muggers off the doorsteps of Mr. Saretsky's doggy daycare.