SAVE THE BUSTS FOR THE BALLOONS

Okay. They goofed.

Armed Abbotsford cops staking out a suspected drug den didn't know that
inside, 13 birthday kids were chowing down on party ice cream cake.

Perhaps the six -pack from the emergency response team should have made it
their business to know -- but they didn't. They goofed.

Yesterday, they said sorry. Okay, apology accepted, er, almost.

We're still a little tense about why the cops lost it, you know, inside.

Didn't their antenna pick up a birthday buzz? Didn't their trained eyes
OBSERVE cake and cream-smeared faces?

Didn't 13 impressionable youngsters with sticky fingers REGISTER on their
psyche before they blew a part pit-bull to bits with a bullet?

It wasn't long ago that Abbotsford (then Matsqui) police had a rep for
over-zealousness: In 1991, a deputy police chief was blasted by the B.C.
Police Commission for unprofessional behaviour, something about nixing an
investigation into two pensioners' complaints of police brutality. A year
later, a top court overturned two murder convictions -- Matsqui police had
tricked the severely-retarded accused into telling.

The valley force has since cleaned up its act, so we're told.

Let the independent review party begin.