FUNDING CUTS HAMSTRING WAR AGAINST DRUGS

The recent arrest and seizure at Fanny Bay, B.C. of a fishing boat loaded
with tonnes of hashish (worth millions of dollars on the street) belies the
current state of drug enforcement in Canada. Most law enforcement officers
agree that we are needlessly losing the war on drugs because our governments
have never resolved to seriously fight that war.

When the government of B.C. established the Co-ordinated Law Enforcement
Unit (CLEU) in 1972, local police departments were able to work alongside
members of the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police -Editor)on an equal
financial footing. This made it possible for municipal police to travel
internationally with RCMP in Joint Forces Operations (JFO) to pursue major
drug investigations which were deemed to be at the heart of the CLEU
mandate.

The results were dramatically successful. Now, sadly, B.C. Attorney General
Ujjal Dosanjh has announced the dissolution of CLEU, essentially putting an
end to JFOs in B.C.

Two of the AG's considerations may have been that, despite the best efforts
of AG officials over the years, CLEU had never been accepted nationally by
the badge-carrying police intelligence community, nor had CLEU any actual
hands-on control over the JFO investigation it once generously funded.

The double whammy for drug enforcement, however, has been the curtailment of
RCMP funding. Most of the recent publicity over this issue has focused on
the cuts to money for provincial policing by RCMP. Very little mention has
been made of the fact that enforcement by federal drug squads across Canada
has virtually been wiped out by the cuts.

Current investigations, many of which have involved many months of intensive
work by the RCMP and their international colleagues, have been either wound
down prematurely or abandoned altogether. No new investigations are being
undertaken.

Funding allocated for overtime, the purchase of information from
confidential sources and the protection of witnesses has been cut off and
the budget reassigned.

Without the ability to protect and pay its sources and to pay its members
overtime, drug squad commanders will be sending their men home. The squads,
for all intents and purposes, will be out of business.

The irony is that drug enforcement can be said to pay much of the cost of
its own operations since the federal government benefits from the disposal
of assets seized from drug criminals. The RCMP Proceeds of Crime units
throughout Canada conduct investigations of money laundering of proceeds
from designated drug offences, customs and exise offences and enterprise
crime offences.

Since Proceeds of Crime legislation was first passed in 1989 the RCMP have
seized approximately $158 million worth of cash and assets, $50 million in
1994 alone. (Statistics for the past three years are not yet available
because of the time involved in clearing the court system.) Most of those
assets came from convicted drug traffickers, including a complete ski resort
in eastern Canada.

All of this money is turned over to Revenue Canada and goes into general
revenue. Not a single penny is reinvested in stepping up the pressure on
drug traffickers by providing the police with more manpower and better
equipment.

The profits realized by drug traffickers are staggering. For example, a
marijuana trafficking case some time ago culminated in a raid on a farmhouse
in the northeastern U.S. where eight rented high-cube Ryders trucks were
seized, each loaded to the ceiling with cardboard boxes full of $100 bills.

Meanwhile, our government has decided to fight this kind of problem by
cutting off funding to its national police force. It is high time that
assets seized as proceeds of crime are used to augment (not replace) the
funding for drug enforcement as has been successfully done in the U.S. These
additional resources should be shared between the RCMP and municipal forces
that contribute to this important law enforcement role.

David L. Staples is a retired RCMP inspector who lives in Victoria.

Checked-by: Don Beck