CRACK GETTING BIGGER

Residents, Business Owners Urge Police to Clamp Down on Drug
Users

Dawn Holmes is getting so sick of watching crack addiction taking over
her neighbourhood that she is starting to think about moving.

Holmes owns a condo on 13th Avenue S.W. and says crack addicts
regularly get high next to her building or across the street in
Central Memorial Park. Her condo has been broken into twice recently,
she's often "verbally assaulted" by crackheads and she is now afraid
to leave her apartment after dark because she says she does not feel
safe.

"It's definitely making me feel uneasy and uncomfortable," she says.
"It's just driving me to the point where I want to live somewhere
else. I just can't believe the state the neighbourhood has come to."

Holmes is applauding the City of Calgary's recent move to spend $6.2
million over the next two years to add 18 more officers to police the
Beltline and the downtown.

"If there was a cop on every corner these people wouldn't be hanging
out. Enough is enough," she says.

Holmes is not alone in feeling that crack is becoming a serious
problem in Calgary's inner city.

Eleventh Street S.W. is also experiencing a lot of crack problems,
says Jimmy Kritikos, whose parents own Kalamata Grocery as well as
apartment buildings in the area.

"It's horrible over here. It's been really bad," he says "My mom's
scared to come down here."

Kritikos says crackheads have pulled knives on customers and some
elderly customers' have had their purses snatched. A man was beaten up
in the back alley behind the store for his wallet. The family
regularly sees people doing crack behind apartment buildings they own
and they find needles as well. The grocery store has seen a lot of
thefts and once a crack addict actually urinated in the back of the
store before anyone realized what was happening, says Kritikos.

"It's disgusting," he says.

Kritikos says often when police are called they never show up or they
do not arrive until hours later. He would like to see some beat cops
dedicated to the neighbourhood who could regularly patrol the area on
bikes or on foot.

Local residents are also fed up with the growing problem, says
Kritikos. Recently one resident decided to take the law into his own
hands and started threatening a drug dealer with a baseball bat until
police arrived.

Scott Calling Last, an outreach worker at Calgary Urban Project
Society (CUPS), says he is seeing more blatant crack usage in the
downtown core.

"The numbers definitely seem to be getting higher," he says. "The
corners seem to be getting more crowded where they use and hang
out . I have noticed a lot of people I used to work with who were
using alcohol who are now doing crack. There's just so much of it out
there and it's an easy trap to fall into."

Calling Last says once people get addicted to crack it does not take
long before they can end up homeless because the drug has such a
powerful hold on them.

There often aren't enough detox beds available for people who want to
start getting clean and people often wait at least two weeks before
they can get into longer-term residential treatment, that can
sometimes come too late because their resolve to quit the drug is
gone, he says.

Calling Last says there are no easy solutions for crack
addiction.

"I don't think arresting people who are hooked on crack is any
answer," he says. "That would be a war-on-drugs mentality and I don't
think that works."