POLICE ACROSS ALBERTA TO SEE INFLUX OF CASH

Rural Alberta will get 100 new police officers and bigger law enforcement
grants in a budget that attempted to balance the policing needs of the
province's smaller communities and big cities.

Calgary and Edmonton, meanwhile, will be the largest beneficiaries of an
additional $6 million that will hire 60 new officers. It will double the
size of the provincially-funded Integrated Response to Organized Crime
bureau, designed to crack down on sophisticated criminal groups.

"This will help us move forward and face new challenges," Solicitor General
Harvey Cenaiko said Wednesday. "We're going to see a lot more police media
releases going out with details of arrests and seizures they've made."

The increases in money for police come as the province's two largest cities
grapple with an increasing number of high-profile shootings and violent
crimes involving gang members.

"Calgarians have identified organized crime and gangs as their number one
(law enforcement) priority, so it's nice to see the government recognize
the wishes of Calgarians," Calgary police Chief Jack Beaton said.

Before there can be results, however, Cenaiko's department and the
province's law enforcement agencies will have to determine exactly how the
new money will be spent and where the new resources will go.

"We're clearly taking this as a sign (Cenaiko's) expecting us to put more
police officers into the rural areas," said Supt. Fred Kamins, who is in
charge of the RCMP's contract policing operations in Alberta.

Under a cost-sharing agreement with Ottawa, the provincial government paid
$113 million last year toward the RCMP's 1,128-member presence in rural
Alberta.

A $15-million increase announced Wednesday will pay for an additional 100
Mounties in the province.

The RCMP also benefitted from a $3 million initiative designed to enhance
courthouse security in smaller communities. The province will use the money
to hire provincial protection officers to provide security and transport
prisoners -- a duty now performed by the RCMP.

The move will free up 30 Mounties currently performing court duties.

Exactly how many of the 130 extra Mounties will be front-line officers --
as opposed to plainclothes investigators -- will depend in part on how the
province structures its organized crime initiative and a new, integrated
child exploitation unit. The new initiative will focus on Internet-based
crimes such as luring and child pornography.

Cenaiko said approximately two-thirds of the 60 new organized crime
investigators will likely be assigned to Calgary and Edmonton, with the
remainder coming from smaller municipal forces and the RCMP.

The new positions will likely be split between intelligence-gathering and
enforcement targeting organized crime rackets like marijuana grow ops and
meth labs.

While the province announced funding formula changes designed to help
smaller communities, grants for Calgary and Edmonton will remain unchanged
at $16 per capita. Still, Calgary's share will increase by $500,000 this
year to just under $15 million, thanks to population growth.

The new formula will give communities between 5,000 and 20,000 a $200,000
base payment and an additional $8 per capita. Communities between 20,000
and 100,000 will get a $100,000 payment plus $14 per capita.

The province will continue to pay all policing costs for communities under
5,000.