GET CRACKING DOWN

It's tough to think of Ottawa as a city with a drug problem.

That's not the image we have of this wonderful place we call home.
Ours is a city of peaceful beauty, surely. The envy of the rest of the
country. The perfect place to live and work and raise a family.

All of that it may well be, but as we were reminded by our police
department this week, Ottawa is not immune to the plague of illegal
drugs that has become a fact of life across North America and indeed
throughout much of the world.

So serious is the problem, our cops have been unable to keep up with
the workload. Staff Sgt. Marc Pinault, who heads the Ottawa police
drug unit, says his squad has had to turn down work because he just
didn't have enough cops to follow up on investigations.

How frightening is that? The bad guys are getting away with what
they're doing because the good guys lack the time and resources to
keep up with them.

The drug dealers and growers, though, are about to get a rude
awakening. The police force has just added 10 cops to the drug squad
- -- its first major staffing boost since 2001 -- and they're promising
to crank up the heat on everyone from street dealers to the organized
crime groups that figure prominently in the illicit trade.

The 10 new cops will bring the squad up to a total of 28 officers and
two support staff.

The increasing number of narcotics cases has resulted in a workload
that has "gone through the roof," Pinault says as police deal with
street drugs ranging from crystal meth to marijuana, crack cocaine,
prescription pills and ecstasy.

While we support the increased police emphasis on the drug problem,
though, we can only hope that a similar get-tough attitude takes hold
in the rest of the legal system.

Because right now our courts all too often reward the efforts of the
cops by imposing slap-on-the-wrist sentences that toss criminals back
on the streets almost before the ink is dry on the police reports.

Ottawans have made it clear during the run-up to the Nov. 13 municipal
election that crime prevention and safe streets are at the top of
their priority list. A crackdown on the shady underworld of illegal
drugs is a good place to start.

Our gang and drug problems are still relatively minor, compared with
what is happening in some larger cities. It won't stay that way,
though, unless we're all paying attention.