CHIEF SETS RECORD STRAIGHT AT ROUND TABLE ON CRIME

Canada's new Conservative government might not think much of the
previous Liberal government's gun registry, but Guelph police
officials don't think much of the idea of dismantling it.

"We are not in favour or scrapping the gun registry," Davis told
federal cabinet minister John Baird at a roundtable on crime here Wednesday.

After Baird said an audit of the gun registry problems indicated as
much as 40% of the information could be wrong, Davis said, "It's news
to me some information is not accurate.

"We use it 5,000 times a day across the country," Davis said, noting
that "we" referred to the Canadian and provincial associations of
chiefs of police.

The roundtable also included Guelph Police deputy chief Brent Eden,
Crime Stoppers Wellington County board chair Dick Chapman and Victim
Services Wellington director Liz Bresnahan. Also there were city
councillors Gloria Kovach, as president of the Canadian Federation of
Municipalities, David Birtwistle and Laura Baily.

They agreed with police that Guelph's biggest problems including a
bogged-down court system, worsening drug scenario of grow house
operations and crack houses, and the downtown night vandalism,
rowdyism and fighting caused by thousands of late night bar patrons.
"It's like a whole different world," said Kovach, who's gone with
downtown police on a late-night ride-along. "It's better than any TV
reality show."

Baily said, "We do not want our downtown taken hostage by night."

Baird cited his government's justice priorities as mandatory minimum
sentencing, tougher sentencing for crimes involving violence or
children, and more controls around conditional release and house arrest.

Baird said it was not a question of choice between addressing the
root cause of crime or getting tough on crime. "You can do both."

However, the gun registry "hasn't helped much" in its 10 years, said
Baird, an Ontario MP who is president of the Treasury Board.
Government has put in more than a billion dollars into the registry,
he said. He favours getting rid of the long gun registry, but "not
the handgun registry" which has been on the books since the 1930s.

Davis said that gun registry information has proven accurate locally
for Guelph Police and that long guns, which the federal government
wants to stop registering, "do a lot more damage."

Guelph has also been burdened with court security costs of $400,000 a
year thanks to provincial downloading in the 1990s, he said, even
though the province eventually took back the cost of transporting
prisoners. Court security money is needed elsewhere, particularly
Guelph's worsening crack-cocaine problem, he said. Guelph's court
system is "getting more bogged down every day," said Davis, with more
paperwork, costs, delays and longer trials. Downtown is "not out of
control" and "getting better," he said. Police have 35 cars in a
two-block area downtown that sees up to 5,000 people in peak bar
hours, including "more and more people" from out of town due to the
"mobility of the drug trade."

Chapman said Crime Stoppers gets 100 calls monthly that lead to five
to 10 arrests monthly. "It's gone up significantly. Drugs are one of
the big things," he said. People are frustrated when grow-op and
crack house dealers "are put under house arrest," said Chapman. Davis
recalled a Cambridge couple who got house arrest for running a
grow-op operation that burned the house to the ground.