FOR A BRIEF AND BEAUTIFUL MOMENT -- THANKS TO THE BOYS IN BLUE --
IT'S NICE AND QUIET AND KIND OF SAFE ON THE BELEAGUERED BELTLINE

It's quiet down on 16-by-12, located on the official maps at the
intersection of 16 Ave. and 12 St. S.W.

Real quiet.

The drug-dealing goofs are gone, for now. Oh, many of them will be
back, thanks to the cockamamie courts.

Many will be picked up again by police. Hopefully, one day they will
meet a judge with a toe in the real world or they will get fed up
with the hassle from the authorities and hightail it to a wimp of a
town deciding they will fight crime by not fighting at all.

But those near 16-by-12 or other such Calgary crossroads will take
the break and hang on to the hope of something better.

Like many streets in this highly-populated part of the city, it
hasn't been quiet for years, despite the reputation of the Beltline
as a place where people could mix and live and let live.

Unfortunately, the idiots appeared and staked their claim as the boom
gained steam five years ago and the scent of easy money brought the
bad with the good.

These newcomers weren't like the familiar street people who just took
a turn and lived on a road less travelled. These weren't individuals
whose minds slipped a gear one day and who now inhabit a parallel
universe to the rest of us.

No, the drugged-out, drug-dealing pains in the posterior didn't add
humanity to the neighbourhood. They added crime, the kind of crime
where we're most likely to be hit.

It didn't take long for the cool to have to compete with the criminals.

It didn't take long until you really had to watch where you walked after dark.

It didn't take long until you escorted friends back to their
vehicles. It didn't take long until someone was in your face shaking
you down for dough or breaking into your car or your digs or turning
the streets into a toilet.

Literally.

And this is in Calgary where everyone boasted of its clean and safe
image. This was in a neighbourhood touted by the city as the wave of
the future when Calgarians would want to live in the inner city.

My, it is quiet down on 16-by-12. On the north side of the street,
the lawn bowling club will be up and running soon, the bowlers in
their white attire on the perfectly manicured grass.

Across the road, you can see what looks like what was supposed to be
a gazebo, with a bench so individuals could, one supposes, watch the
lawn bowling club's competitions.

Now the battered bench is where the small-time drug pushers often ply
their illegal trade with women, most often walking skeletons, looking
to ply another illegal trade.

The bench is carved up and graffiti abounds, unintelligible scrawls
except for one: Love Hurts.

The bottom feeders are not here now. Just like they're not at all
sorts of corners throughout the core of Calgary. The police scooped
up 93 dealers, laying hundreds of charges along with outstanding
warrants. The cops expect the number arrested to break 100 by this morning.

The police look to arrest a total of 206 targets after more than 400
undercover drug buys. Then, 62 uniforms will walk the streets and see
what we all see.

It is true the bad guys will be back but New York City ran this deal
years ago and it worked. Rudy Giuliani, tough-guy mayor of the time,
ordered a crackdown on the streets to show who was boss.

Boy, it really is quiet. Sure nice. Nobody is at the little park next
to the lawn bowling club, except a mom and her daughter playing on
the swings and the slide.

The needle disposal unit looks lonely.

The old man with the full shopping cart clankey-clang-clangs by and says hello.

A panhandler recommends this scribbler drive safely. People bank,
rent videos, pick up dry cleaning, eat a wrap or drop in at a
convenience store without having to run a gauntlet of goofs.

Hell, maybe the streets won't have numbers anymore. It will be
Beltline Mews, Beltline Close, Beltline Place, Beltline ... No, please no.

Only one guy looks sketchy. But, in this neighbourhood, is he a puke
or a poet? You can't judge a hood by his cover.

The hoods are gone. They will come back and others will try and take
the place of those heading for parts unknown.

But now, as a city, we've decided not to roll over this time and
surrender to the usual collective apathy.

"I don't want anybody to think this is the end," says Rick Hanson,
the city's police chief who insists he will not fly the white flag.

"The criminals are going to understand when we tell them the heat is
on, the heat is on."

Staff Sgt. Darren Cave looks like he should play the heat on TV.
"We're not walking away from this one," he says.

The staff sergeant says the crackdown on the crack dealers is "a
giant step forward."

Cave grew up here and has seen the city change. He says we'll see a
difference in weeks. He tells us you couldn't even buy dope in the
downtown Wednesday afternoon and every reporter quotes the statement.

"The word is out," he says.

It is. Lawn bowls, anyone?