CALGARY COPS HAVE CALLED IN THE CLEANUP CAVALRY TO BULLDOZE THE
CRIMINAL SCRAP HEAPS THAT THREATEN THE DOWNTOWN CORE

The busts continue.

Three days and three nights. Could be 100 arrests of street-level
scum by this morning. Maybe more, maybe less.

And there could be another 100 or so in the days to come.

It is a step in cleaning up the streets of the downtown before 62
beat cops put down their first welcome bootprints May 27.

Deputy Chief Al Redford, who tells us he worked the core of this city
when dinosaurs walked the Earth and Calgary contained fewer
law-breaking parasites, says the sweeping up of street-level drug
dealers and other dirtbags prepares the ground for our very own
cavalry to move in and fight the good fight.

"We intend to make the downtown area unpleasant for those who are
making it unpleasant for others," says Redford.

It is long overdue.

For at least five years, as an ever greater caravan of criminals
slithered their way here looking for an easy score, the call for help went out.

Then it became a cry.

Then a demand.

Every city cop knew the situation on the streets was getting bad and
turning worse.

So did a few of those whose job is to cover the criminals and the
crimes they commit.

So did a few politicians and, in this case, the mayor was on the side
of the angels.

But precious little happened.

That's a nice way of saying we endured not only the decay before our
eyes, we had to put up with bucketfuls of bafflegab, bluster and
buck-passing ballyhoo from the highest ranks of the police brass of the day.

The cops who still believed wearing the uniform was a honourable
vocation, dealing with the real threats to society the rest of us
don't want to see and definitely don't ever want to meet, needed
backup from those higher up the food chain.

They didn't get it and we were served up PR swill explaining what
couldn't be done instead of what should be tried.

It bred a culture of defeatism, a sorry chapter now mercifully closed
with the painful long goodbye and final exit of former chief Jack
Beaton and the appointment of Rick Hanson, a Calgarian who loves this
place and made his intentions clear from Day 1.

Allow a brief memory of the trail we've travelled for those who
arrived late and don't know how we got to where we are.

Almost three years to the day, back in May 2006, Bronco and the
former police chief met for 54 minutes behind closed doors, with the
mayor insisting the ex-top cop make his day and put boots on the
ground to enforce the law aggressively.

What, all the pop sociology and head shrink turns of phrase didn't
scare the bad guys away?

Imagine that.

Yesterday, two days and three years later, listening to the rollout
of police plans, it is clear the page has turned.

"There is a time to talk and a time to actually do stuff," says
Hanson, pointing out those who feel Calgary won't go down the biggest
sinkhole of all if things stand pat are "looking through
rose-coloured glasses."

"It's a different world out there."

The No. 1 city lawman mentions how he wants people able to go out for
some fun "and not have to be fearful somebody is going to walk in
with his buddies and a bulge in his suit jacket that doesn't very
much hide his gun because he doesn't want to hide it."

"He wants you to see what a big man he is."

Hanson speaks of getting addicts into a secure detox not yet paid for
by the provincial Tories.

He and his people vow to jump on lawbreakers who try and set up shop
in other neighbourhoods by hitting the hot spots as they surface.

And the police will keep arresting people breaking the law no doubt
hoping the rest of the so-called justice system gets its act together
or some of the vermin vamoose to an easier mark.

It should be mentioned my crib is in beat cop area Bravo 150.

A shout-out to Sgt. Bob McLeod and his uniforms. First coffee is on me.

Yes, for those of us who cross swords and have the wounds to prove
it, this day is truly a long time in coming.

The chief knows the score. Hanson talks of those bygone days,
starting up in the early '80s, what he calls "the smile-and-wave era"
where police couldn't dare wrinkle anybody's shirt or even put the
cuffs on a hoodlum.

"Your job was to just wave to people and smile and apologize for
doing your job as a police officer."

The times they are a-changin' but utopia is not being offered nor
even a return to a simpler Calgary.

Cops see too much crap to deal with impossible replays or visions of
paradise on this side of the pearly gates.

"I hope nobody gets the idea there will be palm trees growing in
downtown Calgary and we'll all be in flip-flops and Bermuda shorts as
we walk down the street," says Hanson.

"The reality is it's taken us years to get where we've got to. It's
not like we're going to clean the streets up overnight."

No, true enough, but every single arrest puts a little more dirt in
the dustpan.