RCMP ASKING FOR PUBLIC FEEDBACK ON DRUGS

The police want you to tell the courts how drugs have ever affected
your life - good or bad - and they will deliver the message. Write a
letter to Prince George RCMP Const. Kent MacNeill, one of the city's
premier drug investigators, and he will pass all the comments on to
courts in one big package.

The collection of comments will form a unique document: a community
victim impact statement. Usually, when a crime is committed against
someone, the victim gets to formally explain how the crime has
affected their life, and that is considered by the judge. All these
personal stories will be arranged into a single giant package which
will stand as a community-wide victim impact statement.

"The sooner the better. I'm hoping over the next month the letters
filter in," MacNeill told The Citizen. "I've already received about a
dozen, mostly from businesses in the downtown core, but I want to
hear everybody's opinion - nothing is too large or too small. It can
be personal, about your family or about your business."

There is a deadline of sorts. The imminent major drug bust the RCMP
announced at Monday's city council meeting and reported in Tuesday's
Citizen, is the target operation for this package of statements.

Supt. Dahl Chambers and Insp. Kirke Hopkins were at the council
meeting and announced that arrest warrants were being issued for 27
drug traffickers in the city. Once those arrests reach the courts,
the city-wide victim impact statements would form part of their
prosecution, explained MacNeill, the primary investigator on that
broad operation.

He said there is already a sentiment emerging from downtown business
owners and managers. They see the drug trade being conducted right on
the city sidewalks in the business core, and they say it is impacting
their livelihoods.

"It has become more visible in the last year or so, especially in the
downtown core," said MacNeill, reflecting the statements already
coming in. "I'm speculating, but last year we executed dozens of
search warrants on crackshacks mostly in the VLA area. To some degree
I think that what has happened is some displacement of the drug trade
from the crackshacks to the open air drug market."

Any effect that the drug trade or drug use (alcohol is a drug) has
had on you, as a business owner or as a member of society, MacNeill
wants to include it. This is the community's chance to speak to the
courts, he said.

It is an unorthodox tactic, but the court system in British Columbia
has already accepted it. The drug trade in Quesnel prompted former
Prince George Mountie Cpl. Gary Senner to compile the first community
impact statement in northern B.C., and it was modelled on others done
in the past in B.C.

"We are no different than any other community, but as a community we
can make a difference," Senner said of the Quesnel experience. "We
have to tell the courts we don't want these people dealing drugs to
our people, turning our people's lives sour, and we want them in
jail. If we can assist these courts to understand the impacts here,
and use that information to place people in jail, that is what we hope for."

MacNeill said he spoke to Senner about how the Quesnel community
victim impact statement worked and said police found it to be successful.

Statements can be dropped off in person to the Prince George RCMP
detachment front counter, mailed to 999 Brunswick Street (V2L 2C3) or
faxed to 250-562-8331 (Attention Cons.t MacNeill).