COMMUNITY TO PUSHERS: WE MEAN BUSINESS

One of the highest-profile components of the territorial government's
Substance Abuse Action Plan will take to the streets in April 2007.

The question: Will the RCMP Street Crime Reduction Team really make a
difference in the territory's thriving drug trade, or merely drive
the problem deeper underground?

Justice Minister Marian Horne announced Monday the government will
commit about $485,000 per year for three years to the team, whose
function is loosely based on a successful British Columbia model.

The unit will be comprised of eight members - six police officers and
two civilian personnel - who will be assigned to intelligence
analysis and communications.

Says Chief Supt. Dave Shewchuk of the RCMP "M" Division: "The team
will deliberately focus on crime hotspots and prolific drug and
alcohol offenders. This will be an addition to our continued
enforcement efforts aimed at disrupting and dismantling the illicit
drug trade at all levels."

Downtown residents and business owners have long argued for a more
stepped-up police presence on the streets, not only to attempt to
throttle the drug-trafficking problem but also to help curb
vandalism, break-ins and other associated crimes. Finally, in a case
of better late than never, the government has stepped up to the plate.

As the participants of the program begin to lay their plans, the
roots of Monday's announcement should not be buried and forgotten:
people power.

It was NDP Leader Todd Hardy who listened to the crescendo of
concerns of many of his Whitehorse Centre constituents last year.

He organized a series of public meetings where residents could vent
their frustrations and brainstorm solutions. The New Democrats then
clamoured for safe communities legislation from a government that
reacted impassively during the early stages of the rising debate.

The pressure on police and policy-makers was racheted up this past
summer when a group of young people confronted a known drug pusher
outside a Main Street bar and successfully demanded that he
leave. That watershed action was followed by a huge anti-drug rally
at Rotary Peace Park.

Finally, through all the turmoil came the government's legislative
and financial commitments to clean up the city of the greedy vultures
who prey upon people's addictions.

Though the community has effectively declared war on narcotics
traffickers, no one should look for their quick abdication of their
willing market.

The intelligence-gathering aspect of the team model will be
particularly important because pushers who tonight ply their trade on
the streets or in the washrooms of bars will simply seek out more
private places to do business. But the persistent police presence,
as long as it's not curtailed by paperwork and other bureaucratic
demands, will greatly enhance the prospects of reducing all forms of
street crime.

Every action spurs a reaction. Depending on the program's success,
drug supplies may be tightened up considerably ( though there will
always be a supply, somewhere ); quality may become more dubious as
those hooked on drugs become increasingly desperate to get a fix; and
street prices may rise substantially.

The government will be faced with the difficult-to-predict fallouts
of more users reconciling themselves to quitting their habit - and
looking to publicly-funded support and counselling programs to help them do it.

More financial resources, then, could well become essential for
addiction treatment.

Monday's announcement heralds a strategy that can never really
entertain a conclusion, for any significant let-up of the
street-level efforts would simply unleash a return to greater drug activity.

Meanwhile, the drug dealers' furtive, parochial existence has been
pierced once more with the message that this city is determined to
preserve a degree of safety and social peace for its current
residents and their children, and for future residents and their children.