UNITED FRONT TO FIGHT CITY'S DRUG TRADE

In Belleville, we have the problem and a complex web of solutions and
fixes and fixers.

We've got drugs, drug users, drug dealers and the police team that
runs them down, takes their drugs and puts them in jail.

We've got drug counselling and drug treatment programs, methadone
clinics and doctors to treat people who use and abuse drugs, but is it enough?

Some, like police and merchants we spoke to, don't believe so.

Project Longarm started in 2001 and consists of three officers from
Belleville plus one officer each from Ontario Provincial Police
detachments in Bancroft, Madoc and Picton. There are also two Longarm
officers from the OPP Quinte West detachment.

Longarm is responsible of taking thousands of dollars in drugs off
the street and arresting scores of traffickers.

"It's the longest standing and most successful (drug) unit in
Ontario," said Belleville police Sgt. Beth Harder.

We can be proud of the effort that is largely spearheaded by our own
Insp. Mike Graham and it's a feather in local law enforcement cap
that we have such a stalwart and stealthy unit on the lookout for
drugs and drug sellers.

Also, the mere presence of Longarm has to send an unsettling feeling
through the drug underworld -- no one knows who's a narc, who's an
informant or what location might be wired with Longarm listening in.

But, while we have impressive law enforcement resources, there's more
that needs to be done.

Graham said there needs to be more effective laws to deal with drug
trafficking. We're sure Graham and his men and women on Longarm see
many of the same players in successive busts and investigations. The
bottom line seems to be the bottom line -- the payoff for running and
selling drugs is greater than the threat of whatever the courts will
do to offenders.

"For every drug dealer we take off the street, there's another one
coming in to take his place," said Graham. "That disrupts the trade,
it doesn't stop it."

Harder agreed dealers will continue to come to the area as long as
there are people who will buy drugs.

"That's just a fact of life," agreed Graham. "We can't solve it, we
enforce it."

Graham said he "support(s) any decision made by the judges," but if
legislation allowed harsher penalties for dealers and traffickers,
things might change.

"Something has to catch their (dealers) attention," he said.

"If you ask any police officer, you'll hear we would like to see
harsher punishments. (But) that's not my decision."

"We can't do it alone," added Harder, saying the community needs to
work together to get to the bottom of the problem.

Cate Sutherland and her counselling staff at the Addictions Centre
are doing their part to bring down the number of those dependent on drugs.

But the community has to acknowledge a problem exists and work toward
ways to stem the tide.

"People have stopped caring about people in need," said Katherine
Davis, owner of The Organic Underground on Front Street.

Maybe she had it right when she suggested we do more to stop the
demand for drugs by reaching out to the people who use them.

"We're forgetting that we're a community and that we should have a
little empathy for them," she said.

It's a start.