HOW TO FIX HOBBEMA

When I picked up my paper Monday morning to read about the latest
senseless murder on the Samson First Nation -- the third in four
weeks -- I wanted to bang out a column demanding that the federal and
provincial governments send more RCMP officers to the reserve to restore order.

The latest victim was young mother Delena Dixon, 20, who died after
her house was peppered with bullets late Saturday night.

It was the second attack on the house.

The night before, a man in the same house was shot, but in his case,
the bullet only grazed his arm.

RCMP say both shootings were gang-related.

There are now 39 officers with the Hobbema detachment, with some of
the heaviest caseloads in the country. With Samson community
residents describing their reserve as a war zone filled with
terrorists, my gut response was to suggest we should send in the
army, if necessary, to clean the place up.

But would more cops, more boots on the ground, make a difference?

Not according to Fred Lindsay, Alberta's solicitor general.

"We've already got twice as many police officers there as in any
other community of that size," says Lindsay. "I'm convinced that if
we sent in 15 or 20 more officers, it wouldn't do anything."

The gang violence that plagues Hobbema, he says, is fuelled by the drug trade.

"People in that community need to shape up their lives and stop using
these drugs. If they do that, this problem will go away."

Sound politically incorrect? As if we're blaming native victims for
their own woes? I might have thought so, too -- if I hadn't also
spoken with Hobbema RCMP Const. Perry Cardinal.

Cardinal is aboriginal himself, though he grew up in northern
Alberta, not in Hobbema.

Cardinal says gun complaints have spiked in the Hobbema area in the
past month. Instead of just handguns and rifles, the RCMP are now
seeing more rapid-fire weapons and high-powered assault rifles.
Still, he doesn't think assigning more officers to the reserve would help.

"I'm not sure what we can do differently," says Cardinal.

"It's almost like we're spinning our wheels."

It wasn't supposed to be this way. In April, after two-year-old Asia
Saddleback was seriously wounded in a gang-related drive-by shooting,
the Samson community rallied to try to bring violence on the reserve
under control.

The RCMP instituted special "suppression group" patrols, dispatching
an extra four officers every evening to patrol the reserve and watch
for trouble.

On Aug. 1, the province began a firearms amnesty program, which
allows people to turn in weapons and ammunition without fear of being
charged with possession of unregistered or unlicensed weapons.

The Saddleback shooting was supposed to be the turning point, the
wake-up call that galvanized a community to heal itself. But
apparently the young gangsters who plague the reserve didn't get
their copy of that fairy-tale script.

Cardinal says there are at least 13 identified gangs operating in the
Hobbema area, gangs fighting over the crack cocaine market. But he's
not talking about big-time "organized crime."

"It's more like a five-and-dime program. Nobody out here is getting
rich, as far as I can see.

"A big percentage of the people here are customers," he says. "At
least 20 per cent or more use. Every time they buy drugs, they
support the gangs."

The vast majority of people on the reserve aren't using drugs, aren't
involved in gangs. There are hundreds of people from Samson working
hard to raise families, get through school or build careers.

Still, Cardinal says it's not easy for the RCMP to get those
law-abiding residents to help them.

Some are too afraid to talk to the police, afraid of gang reprisals.
Others subscribe to what Cardinal calls the code of silence. In a
tight-knit community of 12,000, where almost everybody is related to
everybody else, it isn't easy to convince people to "snitch."

"The code of silence has to change. People in this community have to
take responsibility. They have to step up. Enough is enough.

"There are lots of good people here," Cardinal says, "but the
dangerous people aren't the ones who commit the crimes. They're the
ones who sit back and let it happen."

Perry Cardinal is right. Outsiders can't fix the Samson First Nation.
Only the community can heal itself -- by taking responsibility for
its own problems.

Arguably, flooding the reserve with more officers might only breed
resentment and make it harder than ever to break that code of silence.

Yet, let's recognize that drug addiction is more than just a poor
lifestyle choice. It's a sickness.

The Samson crime crisis is rooted in a great mental health crisis
that spans generations.

And while problems on the Samson First Nation are far more extreme,
at some level they are merely a reflection of a culture of drugs and
violence that permeates the province, that crosses all cultural boundaries.

It's a little too sanctimonious just to tell people to stop using drugs.

If we want to stem the gang violence at Samson and across Alberta,
we, as a province, need comprehensive drug treatment and addiction
prevention programs that work.

And at the same time, we as individuals must take more responsibility
for the health and safety of our communities.

None of us can afford to sit passively by and let drug trade violence
spread around the province. We must put boots to the ground, all
right. Our own.