GANGING UP ON GANGS

More Police Will Help But Only If Bad Guys Get Locked Away

More police and resources dedicated to fighting gangs may be the
right response to Wednesday's events, in which one person was killed,
one was blinded and another injured in three separate shooting
incidents. But, while more police is the easiest place to start, it
is hardly sufficient. The entire justice system needs an attitude
adjustment, and new best-practices.

And quickly. True, one person shot dead and two wounded in one day,
is fluke. What raises the temperature is that one of the wounded was
unrelated to the people shooting at each other -- the
"only-a-matter-of-time" innocent bystander.

When a young man out for dinner with his girlfriend ends up blinded
by a bullet in the face, the usual self-reassurances are undermined
- -- such as, when one crook shoots dead another crook, the result is
one less crook, or avoiding the drug culture should keep you safe.
Not the highest expression of human empathy in any case, but for
Calgarians such denial is becoming harder, and the case for draconic
action easier to make.

Nine people have been shot dead in Calgary this year, and Mayor Dave
Bronconnier has repeated calls for a well-funded provincial anti-gang
strategy, with more police officers hired.

But, what happens once police reinforcements start making arrests?
Without judicial reform, it will be what happens now, with similar
lack of result.

We have described in these columns before, how a generous
catch-and-release bail procedure returns people accused of quite
serious offences to the street in defiance of all logic. For
instance, one of Calgary Police Service Chief Rick Hanson's first
jobs post-appointment was a media tour, during which he related an
instance of bail granted to somebody arrested with an unregistered
handgun. One would have supposed this would have been a slam dunk for remand.

Apparently not.

We have also noted criminals use disclosure not only of evidence, but
how it is gathered, to study and circumvent police methods: Also, the
narrow constitutional gates through which the police must take the
accused. One that continues to gall us three years after it happened
was when after a particularly fruitful series of drug busts, some
grow operators moved from Calgary to a quieter community. Police were
tipped off, and with commendable initiative, began checking new
telephone listings of likely names. However, the resulting charges
were thrown out, when the court ruled the police had engaged in
ethnic profiling.

But, how completely the link between gun crime and serious
consequence has been severed, was reported Tuesday by the Herald's
Daryl Slade, the very day before Calgary's shocking series of gun incidents.

Having pleaded guilty to aggravated assault by shooting another man
five times with a .22 Ruger, a 25-year-old city man in whose house
police found the loaded handgun, ammunition, $5,500 in cash, five
bags of powder cocaine weighing 80 grams and a bag of crack cocaine
was returned to house arrest, pending sentencing October 1.

This character had also pleaded guilty to breaching two court orders
by being in possession of a weapon and drugs, two other weapons
charges and possession of drugs for the purpose of trafficking -- as
well as admitting being in possession of a 9-mm handgun when stopped
by police on March 7. The gun had the hammer cocked back: when the
officer ejected the magazine he noted a round in the chamber, the gun
thus being ready to fire.

There is only one reason why somebody would be carrying an illegal
handgun in the downtown core: to do something criminal. Either we
treat this kind of offence as serious, or we don't. If we don't --
and house arrest in this situation is a joke -- we will see more of them.

No reasonable Canadian aspires to a police state, nor some Minority
Report world in which people are convicted upon suspicion. Yet, long
before Albertans need grapple with the dilemmas posed by such
extremes, they could find a comfortable balance of civil liberties
with police powers sufficient to accomplish what most Canadians say
they want -- safe streets, and the worst criminals set to
manufacturing licence plates for long enough to get good at it and
perhaps even turn their lives around.

Never mind registries of legal long guns. Those who seek to
criminalize law-abiding duck hunters are often the very same people
who abhor the building of new jails for true criminals.

It starts at the top. Work the police as hard as one can, but judges
must be ready to jail felons, and governments prepared to build
penitentiaries. A federal election is a perfect time to hear concrete
plans towards these ends. We must demand it.

Or, nothing will change.