COPS SEND SIGNAL WITH DRUG BUSTS

It's a glorious afternoon in downtown Victoria, all shirtsleeves and
sunglasses as the cleancut, twentysomething guy in the football shirt
saunters past City Hall.

Out of nowhere a couple of cops on mountain bikes catch up to him. Hello,
you're busted. Suddenly, his day isn't so sunny any more.

It was a scene played again and again as, one by one, street-level drug
dealers were picked off by Victoria police on Wednesday, the culmination of
a three-week undercover operation that resulted in 29 arrest warrants.
Almost all charges were for trafficking cocaine, a few for selling marijuana.

It wasn't that tough to target the suspects. The marijuana merchants have
been hanging around Centennial Square, the cocaine traffickers generally
being just down the block around Pandora and Douglas. (You would think the
presence of so many nasty characters around City Hall would cause an
outcry, but the dealers don't seem offended by the politicians.) The trade
is more or less open.

Open, but not so easy to prove in court. Typically, the dealer sitting on
the big bag of dope never sees the buyer. Instead he'll hand a couple of
spitballs -- quarter-gram packages of cocaine -- to a second guy, who'll
store them in his mouth and head off to the street. The second guy sells
the spitballs for $20 a pop, then takes the money to a third guy before
heading back to the wholesaler.

So even if the police see the deal go down, even if they get to the second
guy's throat before the evidence goes down, it's rare to find anyone
clutching a bunch of cocaine in one fist and a bunch of cash in the other.
Bust someone for selling a quarter gram of cocaine, and the judge may go
"that's not very much" and sentence accordingly. Never mind that there's a
spitball spitting out of the kid's mouth every 10 minutes.

Not that Wednesday's targets are exactly Pablo Escobar anyway. "Middling" a
deal to the buyer will earn the second guy only five bucks. The
street-level dealers, mostly young men, aren't raking in nearly as much
money as the dial-a-dope types who conduct transactions by phone and pager.

But this operation wasn't necessarily so much about the War on Drugs as the
Battle for Downtown.

"There's a big problem around the culture that develops around drug
trafficking in downtown areas," says Insp. John Ducker.

Violence, shoplifting, strongarmings and, well, the type of intimidating
behaviour that causes little old ladies and frightened tourists to scuttle
to the other side of the street all spin off from street dealing.

It's one reason Victoria police want to dedicate eight uniformed officers
to a downtown foot patrol this summer. And it's why the Victoria strike
force -- augmented by police from Oak Bay, Saanich, the Lower Mainland and
the U.S. navy -- put so much effort into the undercover exercise. (The
presence of the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigation Service agents coincided
with last month's visit of the USS Abraham Lincoln; their participation was
designed to show dealers that it is no longer safe for them to sell to
someone who flashes American ID.)

Wednesday's arrests won't put a lasting dent in the downtown drug trade,
let alone end it or address the causes of substance abuse. Most of those
charged Wednesday have been charged before, and may well be charged again.
(Remember that Bugs Bunny episode where the wolf and sheepdog punch the
same time clock? The police and dealers must relate.)

But the roundup will send a signal that no one is surrendering to street
crime, that downtown is still a safe place to be, and that if you do want
to sell cocaine within a stone's throw of the mayor's office, then you had
best keep one eye peeled for mountain bikes.