GANG PLAN FALLS SHORT, SAY CRITICS

Province Urged To Take Action Against Causes Of Drug-Related
Crime

The province's plan to battle drug-dealing gangs with beefed up
policing will fail unless it also focuses on preventing youth from
becoming street thugs and helping them leave gangs once they're in,
several crime experts said Wednesday.

"This is not a problem we can arrest our way out of," said Michael
Chettleburgh, a crime consultant and one of the country's foremost
experts on street gangs.

"What we keep missing, what we keep waiting for from the Alberta
government, is we need to start putting some serious money into prevention.

"It's not just about putting cops on the street."

Solicitor General Fred Lindsay assured Wednesday the province's gang
strategy will be about more than just hiring extra police officers.

On Tuesday, the provincial government announced it would dedicate most
of its $42.4 million in federal police recruitment dollars toward
creating four gang enforcement teams -- one each for the Calgary and
Edmonton regions and the others in southern and northern Alberta. The
teams, which will integrate RCMP and municipal police forces, will
include 67 officers and civilian crime analysts. They're expect to be
in place by April.

But Liberal justice critic MLA Kent Hehr argues even more police
officers are needed in Calgary and Edmonton as the cities grapple with
gangs and gun violence. Alberta has fewer police per capita than other
parts of the country.

"Without the actual police officers to do the the job, I'm skeptical
of the whole outcomes," Hehr said.

Calgary has racked up 30 homicides so far this year, already equalling
last year's total. Many of the homicides have been linked to gang activity.

The province recently assembled a team comprising seven government
departments, including justice, education and health, to create a
blueprint for suppressing gangs.

The strategy will focus on four pillars: enforcement, awareness,
prevention and intervention.

The cross-ministry effort will present recommendations for public
consideration at the Alberta government's first-ever gang summit in
March, which will be held in Calgary.

"It's all about getting to the root cause of these things and
addressing them in a better manner than having them go through the
courts and end up in our facilities," Lindsay said.

University of Alberta criminologist Bill Pitt, a former RCMP officer,
notes Calgary's gang growth is due partly to Edmonton police and
community groups putting the squeeze on gangs in the capital in recent
years. A buoyant economy has also played a role, he added.

"Calgary is all of a sudden blooming," Pitt said. "You're going to
have a bumper crop of homicides. You're infested with gangs."

Pitt applauded the Alberta government's pledge to create gang
enforcement teams and its decision to target career criminals.

Today, Premier Ed Stelmach will release more details about a new
policing effort to target 60 hardcore repeat offenders -- 20 in
Calgary, 20 in Edmonton and 20 in rural Alberta.

But like Chettleburgh, he believes policing alone won't reduce the
number of people joining gangs.

Chettleburgh, who has consulted on gang violence in Hobbema's four
native reserves, says that for every dollar the Alberta government
spends on enforcement, it should match that on prevention and
intervention programs.

He points to an Edmonton initiative called the Community Solution to
Gang Violence. Started four years ago, the grassroots organization has
successfully pulled together a community coalition to study and tackle
gang violence.

It receives no provincial funding. The organization's project manager,
Karen Erickson, hopes that will soon change.

"Enforcement is a piece of the puzzle but only a small piece," she
said.

"Unless we get at what's feeding these gangs, and the kids getting
into gangs every day, we are not going to get ahead of this."