CRIME-PREVENTION MEANS SOLVING PROBLEMS, NOT BUILDING JAILS

Glass Pyramid's Police-Budget Talks Should Revolve Around More
Addictions Counsellors, Social Workers And Treatment Centres

Oh, how the phones did ring angrily at City Hall the year council
cruelly cut the budget for civic flower planting.

It was as if civic politicians took away caffeine or hockey from the citizenry.

One could imagine the city managers of the day secretly sniggering
and high-fiving each other as the citizen protest grew. They had
successfully pulled off what is known under the glass pyramids as the
Barney the Bear gambit.

A former police chief, facing cuts to his budget, once offered up to
council the police service's huggable mascot for cost savings. Go
ahead, council, kill the bear. Snigger, slap.

The police service can be a bit insufferable during city budget
deliberations, what with their demands for helicopters, spy cameras,
ranger hats, Glocks and new recruits to use them.

Council usually puts up a token fuss. But then the chief will talk
about the epidemic of drug-taking, gang-joining, street-hookering,
car-thieving and general crime-committing.

Other city departments look on in envy at the police service's fiscal
and moral high ground. Imagine following the chief's hard act, and
going before council to ask for a new photocopier, three light bulbs
and two-ply toilet paper for the tax branch. Two-ply? We're not
running a resort here, buddy.

Edmonton's reigning chief of police, Mike Boyd, is a different cat,
it seems. Granted, Boyd and his Calgary counterpart recently made a
plea to the province for 400 additional officers.

If approved, the numbers will hit the civic budget hard. Even if the
province coughs up for salaries, you have to equip those cops with
Glocks and hats and pension plans, then build a station to house
their hat racks and park their squad cars.

But Boyd, in a long conversation this week, was adamant he's not
politicking for a budget increase. He knows those 400 officers amount
to "a big ask."

If things stay the same, those 400 new bodies will be needed, warns
Boyd. But he's optimistic we're seeing a new wave of public safety
and crime prevention initiatives in Edmonton and the province.

Boyd, for example, is a big fan of the drug-treatment court. Addicts
are the leading scorers, if you will, of crime statistics. The street
addict needs a fix like we need breath. So he or she is highly
motivated to panhandle, rob or break into something to get money for the fix.

Addicts use up vast amounts of court and policing resources. The drug
court's mandate is to get addicts into treatment, to keep at least
some of them out of the revolving door.

As Boyd says, there's now a push on, too, to have a court for
offenders with mental illness. My hope is that we'll do something
similar for street alcoholics. Wet shelters in other cities show that
housing alcoholics in a safe, supportive environment where booze is
made available drastically reduces policing, ambulance and
emergency-room costs.

Boyd is also pleased to see city departments, court officials, health
officers and school superintendents now sitting together to
problem-solve issues of crime.

But we still have major roadblocks. As Boyd points out, the courts'
hands are often tied to a strict jail or no-jail answer. You can't
send an addict, chronic alcoholic or psychiatric patient to a
treatment centre or supervised group home that doesn't exist. We are
sadly lacking in such facilities.

One day, perhaps we'll grow up and build them. Maybe we'll even throw
needed resources at so-called upstream causes. Somewhere out there in
the big city today are sad children in neglectful homes of drug
abuse, violence and poverty. Some of them, perhaps many of them, are
future addicts and criminals.

My hope is that we'll get over our moral outrage about some of
crime's root causes -- drugs, alcohol and generational poverty -- and
place problem-solving over punishment. Voters need to question
politicians who promise more cops and tougher sentences. How about
more addictions counsellors, social workers or head-start spaces?

I remember a tiny woman walking me around a supposedly dangerous
Edmonton neighbourhood one night. She talked about how people live in
fear, huddled behind locked doors.

In our fear, we demand that the police make us safe again. Yet as
Boyd knows, this is an expensive and failing proposition.

Only progressive communities working creatively together to solve
systemic problems will allow us to take back the streets.

And once we're out there, maybe we could even plant flowers.