POLICE NOT CELEBRATING

It was almost anticlimactic. After this week's announcement of a
massive drug bust by Mounties and city cops in Edmonton and Calgary,
you'd think that police and Crown prosecutors would be clinking
champagne glasses.

After all, 18 suspects were charged, some of whom are accused of
being several rungs up the drug-trade food chain.

Not to mention the 20 kilograms of cocaine, along with pot and
crystal meth that were seized. Add to that $2 million in cash,
vehicles and even homes believed by police to be acquired through
criminal activity, and the cops should have quite a few trophies to
mount on their walls.

But their joy seemed muted, to say the least. "The reality is there
are a lot of other groups out there that are just as active as
these," Insp. Rick Bohachyk of the Edmonton police told the media on
Wednesday. "Someone will quickly step up and fill the gap."

For battle-weary cops, trying to put even a dent in Alberta's
exploding drug trade is like trying to put a chokehold on water.

And part of the reason for that, according to one gang expert, is the
increasingly sophisticated way organized crime conducts business.

It's all about outsourcing, says Len Untereiner, head of the Spirit
Keeper Youth Society. Even the grittiest street gangs don't do their
own dirty work any more. But that doesn't mean they're not still
pulling the strings.

"Gang membership, as most people would know it, is actually quite
small," Untereiner explains. "What's exploding is the number of what
I call the associates."

Here's one way it works. Drugs are produced and distributed by highly
organized gangs, who in turn wholesale the product to street gangs.
Those street gangsters sell small quantities to an army of low-level
dealers, who in turn sell to users who also sell small amounts.

For the dealer, having a small army of salesmen addicted to the
product they're selling is the perfect situation. He literally has
the power of life and death over them.

"They just keep falling in deeper and deeper," Untereiner explains.
"They might move $10,000 or $12,000 worth of product a week for him,
but they'll still owe him another $1,000 for what they've used themselves."

The foggy haze of addiction means that most losers on the lowest rung
of this structure don't even realize that they've been enslaved.
They're also wide open to all kinds of manipulation - they can be
coerced, threatened and beaten almost to death but there's no way on
earth they'll betray the person who feeds their habit by co-operating
with police.

Many are instructed to steal cars or break into houses to pay down
their drug debts, but they never really have any hope of digging
themselves out. Women are often turned out as prostitutes to work
Edmonton's streets.

A gang affiliate once told me of debt-ridden addicts agreeing to
assault and even kill total strangers on orders from the people to
whom they owed huge drug debts.

"You do whatever you're told," the affiliate told me. "If you don't,
it'll be you whose life is about to end."

With hapless minions stumbling around, doing all the dirty work that
outrages the general public, the real gangsters are insulated from
prosecution. And if those minions get caught, they take the fall,
with nothing to directly link them to the gangs.

Meanwhile, the trafficking in human misery continues unabated and
evil people just keep getting richer from it. No wonder the police
aren't ready to celebrate.