WAR ON CRIME: VERDICT'S STILL OUT ON WHALLEY

Two months after Surrey declared war on crime in Whalley, signs of victory
are scarce.

The Mounties and the drug dealers still play a cat-and-mouse game on 135A
Street, the centre of the area's drug problem.

Police attention is still centered on people hanging out, talking loudly
and demonstrating no particular business. Names are recorded, but no
arrests are made -- and the players soon drift back.

That same scene is played out repeatedly along the 10600 block as Surrey's
inner-city cleanup troops battle street by street to take back the downtown.

Surrey's 135A Street is in the heart of downtown, a stone's throw from the
needle exchange, homeless shelter, food bank and a handful of methadone
dispensaries that councillors say attract the wrong traffic.

The Broken Windows campaign is modelled on a successful New York program
that showed zero tolerance for infractions -- including garbage, graffiti,
littering, building code problems, drug trafficking and stealing. The
results? Depends who you ask.

Whalley's Sgt. Sean Maloney says the volume of incidents has been reduced
and "we're getting a lot of positive feedback."

Mayor Doug McCallum says "everywhere I go, people say how much it's
changing . . . We can't drive drug dealers out overnight, but we're
determined."

Some alleys and vacant lots are cleaner, given frequent pickups from city
staff. A number of crackhouses have been closed.

But Cal Dante, who uses his wheelchair to get around, scoffs at a concrete
barrier on 135A that the city installed, only to remove it under legal
threats: "The whole thing was stupid. It's just wasting money. If anything,
it advertised where to score."

Over at the Surrey Central SkyTrain station, Panini bistro owner Rob
Goedman says things haven't changed much: "I get approached to buy weed
(marijuana) or hard drugs after parking my car. The dealers are here all
day long. The police will red-zone them [tell them not to return], but they
come back because it's such a moneymaker."