TIGHTEN NOOSE ON CRIMINAL KING PINS, HARCOURT SAYS

Former B.C. premier Mike Harcourt urged police and judges Thursday to
target the "king-pins" of organized crime in Vancouver and send them
to jails in the Arctic.

"We need to apprehend the 300 to 400 big crooks there are in this city
who are involved with the Hells Angels, Russian gangs, Vietnamese
gangs, the Mafia, the real-hard nosed [criminals], not the drug
addicts," the former Vancouver mayor said in an address to the annual
Canadian Congress on Criminal Justice in Vancouver.

"Get them thrown in jail. I don't care if you need to build three new
prisons on Baffin Island, or put them [the prisons] in a
high-unemployment part of the province."

Harcourt embraced police-generated estimates that the city's roughly
6,000 drug addicts are to blame for 80 per cent of the burglaries,
auto thefts and other crimes committed to feed expensive habits, but
he said these addicts should be treated, not jailed.

"I have some experience to comment on the absolute failure of the J.
Edgar Hoover approach to drugs and crime," said Harcourt, after noting
he was once a criminal defence lawyer and had chaired the Vancouver
Police Board when he was mayor.

He said he doesn't believe in capital punishment or executions, but
the justice system must ensure "life means life" and those 25-year
"life sentences" are served.

"Give the police the resources they need to focus on those people," he
said. "Seize their assets and close their businesses. Treat them like
the scumbags they are. And have the courage to do that. There will
probably be retribution, but there are millions of us and there are
300 to 400 of them."

Harcourt praised former Vancouver mayor Philip Owen for having the
courage to advocate harm-reduction measures, such as the supervised
drug-injection centre that opened this year near Hastings and Main.
Harcourt said Owen's leadership on drug issues led to Owen's being
kicked out of the mayor's chair by his political party, the
Non-Partisan Association.

Harcourt said the so-called four pillars strategy -- prevention, harm
reduction, enforcement and treatment -- is the correct approach.

He also said it is "too timid," and there aren't enough detoxification
and treatment facilities for drug addicts.

"We need to treat those 6,000 addicts as sick people, not criminals,"
he said.

Harcourt didn't endorse any specific type of treatment program, but
listed everything from Narcotics Anonymous meetings to methadone
maintenance, saying: "I don't care if it's yoga; whatever it takes."

The problem, Harcourt said, is that hard drug users are now waiting up
to six weeks for treatment, and there are only 200 beds available for
the estimated 6,000 addicts here.

Harcourt's target for 2010: successfully treat 3,000 addicts and
impose 25-year prison terms on 100 criminal "kingpins" who profit from
deadly addictions.

"If you let police have the resources they need -- the surveillance,
the wiretaps, the stings -- they'll deal with those people," he said.
"There are a lot more big crooks we need to catch, convict and put in
penitentiary for a long period of time."

In Victoria, Solicitor-General Rich Coleman said the provincial
justice system properly balances its resources between cracking down
on criminal king-pins and small-time street criminals and drug users.

While B.C. is doing its best to fight crime, Coleman blamed the
federal government for not giving law-enforcement officials enough
legal tools to deal with organized gangs.

"We've been saying for some time we want to crack down on outlaw
motorcycle gangs and organized crime in this province. We've been
asking the federal government to give us the legislation to do that."

Specifically, the federal government should introduce stronger
penalties and tax reforms to track the proceeds of crime, he said.

"We could use some stiffer penalties to deal with organized
crime."

Vancouver Councillor Jim Green, acting mayor while Mayor Larry
Campbell is travelling, said he agrees with Harcourt that the kingpins
of crime should be targeted, but is hesitant about sending them to
prisons in the Arctic.

"I would totally agree with that [focusing on the kingpins]. I
certainly think people who are merchants of death should pay the
penalty but I'm not sure about the prisons in the Arctic."

Green also said he agrees addicts should be treated medically, rather
than treated like criminals.

He cited the situation in the U.S. in which petty criminals are often
thrown in jail where they link with serious criminals.

"In the U.S., you can get a 16-year-old kid smoking a joint being sent
to jail and coming out a cocaine addict. That doesn't work. It costs a
fortune and it creates more criminals."

Green said there are many illegitimate businesses in Vancouver that
front for organized crime.

"If you look on Hastings Street, there are so many illegitimate
businesses. What I mean by that is they're fronts for drug dealers,
the money launderers. We're now trying to go after those people who
own illegal businesses and shut them down.

"We closed a guy down the other day who had an army of trained
shoplifters who went to Safeway and brought back mozzarella cheese for
his pizza store."

Vancouver police representative Constable Sarah Bloor agreed addicts
should not be treated like criminals, but said police have been
following that policy for some time.

"We've been saying for a long time that our focus is not on the user.
Our focus is on the trafficker. We try to go after those who are
primarily involved in the upper levels of it. We understand the users
on the street do need assistance."

Bloor said police also aim for organized crime, but that it's the
courts' responsibility to deal with the problem after charges are laid.

"Organized crime is very diverse. We do have a focus and we have an
effort to dismantle organized crime elements. But all we can do is to
present those individuals to the courts with the evidence we've gathered.

"Ultimately, [a lengthy prison term] is not our decision. The courts
make that decision based on a variety of criteria."

Sergeant Gilles Deziel, media representative of RCMP headquarters in
Ottawa, said fighting organized crime is a priority with the force,
but that targeting lower level criminals often helps
investigations.

"We are always trying to fight organized crime. Sometimes we have to
start at the bottom to get to the top."

Deziel said priorities for the RCMP include fighting Asian-based
organized crime, Eastern European-based organized crime and motorcycle
gangs.

He also said that RCMP confiscates property of criminals, including
high-level criminals. "We do what we can, according to the law."