RCMP: POLICE SHARE CRIMEFIGHTING KNOW-HOW

Crime prevention is on the agenda for a major conference this week, to
be attended by Langley officers.

Police and academics will be rubbing elbows at a national crime
prevention conference in Chilliwack this week, and Langley's top cops
will be there.

Supt. Janice Armstrong, the head of Langley's RCMP detachment, will
attend this year's Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis
conference (ECCA) at the Pacific Regional Training Centre starting
July 26.

Along with Armstrong at the three day event will be Insp. Richard
Konarski, the operations support officer, the head of community
policing and a number of other senior Mounties.

It is a chance for the officers to learn about strategies for cutting
crime rates, the newest research from the academic world and practical
application lessons from other officers.

Topics of papers and research include everything from closed-circuit
TV cameras to terrorism, from library book theft to serial murder.

Konarski, who has a masters in criminology from SFU, will be meeting
many of the academics he went to school with.

"One thing I've learned from school is I'm certainly smart enough to
know when I can learn from other people," he said.

The conference will be a good opportunity to get a fresh perspective,
said Konarski.

He compares problems of crime prevention to working on a rubik's cube
puzzle. Often, someone with a different perspective can come along and
see a few simple moves you hadn't realized were there.

Konarski recently worked with a police officer visiting from Asia to
learn in Langley about tackling drug crime. In the other officer's
home country, dealers can be put to death.

If Canadian officers are always asking for tougher penalties, why
should there be any drug problems on the other side of the Pacific,
Konarski asked.

"He smiled and said, 'Well, it still happens,'" said
Konarski.

In many cases, it isn't so much the severity of the penalty, but the
likelihood of getting caught or getting away with something that
motivates criminal decision making.

With perspectives from countries as diverse as the United Kingdom,
South Africa, Chile and Korea, the conference should offer local
police the chance to learn from a wide variety of experiences.

It's a great opportunity to build on what the Langley detachment has
been doing, Konarski said.

Langley's police have just finished the first six months of a new
crime reduction strategy, and it seems to be paying some dividends, he
said.

Now they are working to integrate their sections, getting drug
officers to work with community policing, for example, and getting to
the root causes of crime.

The invitation-only conference runs until July 29.