MAKING THE BAD GUYS SQUIRM

It's A Battle Of The Minds As Cops Use Intimidation Tactics While
Working The Beat On Stony Plain Road

Fighting crime on a notoriously gritty stretch of Stony Plain Road is
a battle of the minds, even if the bad guys seem to be fighting unarmed.

"It's always about applying that pressure," says Edmonton police
Const. Trevor Sutherland.

He and partner Const. Bill Countryman are beat cops on the strip
flanking 156 Street.

Pressure means constantly finding ways to control criminals who can be
completely irrational. Most are on drugs and trying to feed their
habits, said the officers.

"Good people are deterred by punishment ... the people who
occasionally do small things like the odd shoplifting. But five per
cent of people are responsible for 95% of crime. They're not deterred
by punishment and they're fully aware what they're doing is wrong.

"It's personality-driven crime ... Any strategy that has its primary
basis in logic, in reasonable thinking, is going to fail."

So, toss reason out the window, and come for a walk.

Sutherland and Countryman leave their nondescript office at 156 Street
and Stony Plain Road, but skip the main route for the back lanes.

These are the streets people trying to duck attention walk. It's the
local supply trail.

Within a block, the first colourful client appears -- a guy toting a
grocery bag of clothes who admits he just got out of jail. He's back
on the strip just hanging out by the 7-Eleven -- and he's familiar to
the officers.

"I'm born and lived down here all my life, 30 years," he said, trying
to explain why he came back to the same area, the same life. The
officers are asking him questions -- Why are you sitting here? Who do
you know? -- questions designed to make their subjects squirm.

"Dealing with us is a pain in the ass. We try to make it that way,"
said Countryman.

Just ask the scruffy-haired old man with the "Petro Can't" hat in
front of the Jasper Place Hotel. He admits he's been busted for
trafficking before. He's banned from the hotel, but he's loitering out
front.

"I go to jail all the time because we live here," he retorts. Just
don't live where you're banned, say the officers before handing him a
ticket worth a couple hundred dollars.

"He doesn't pay that," Countryman said afterward. "He's mad because if
he doesn't pay there'll be a warrant issued for his arrest -- and that
gives us the power of search." It's five days of jail during which the
officers don't have to deal with him, and a chance to find out what
he's really up to.

"We have to make them paranoid. We have to make them think we're
always around watching," said Sutherland.

They cover their office walls in mug shots of common criminals. They
study their relationships, find out how to push their buttons. They
follow them, knock on their doors whenever needed. The officers pay
close attention to drug houses and troubled apartment blocks so they
can have targets evicted, hoping to disrupt their business and move
them away.

It doesn't make them many fans. Residents of a recently busted drug
house left cursing graffiti for the officers before they left -- a
couple calling Countryman a fool.

"They're a--holes," said a woman the officers picked out as a user.
She admits to doing whatever drug she can get her hands on. She lives
in an alleged drug house the officers love to target -- by blaring the
Magnum PI song over their patrol car public address system at 7 a.m.

The officers readily admit to the pestering. "That is a drug house. We
want them to not feel comfortable there," said Sutherland.

Instead of tolerating the cops, why doesn't the woman just leave the
life?

"Everybody has their crutch, whether it be God, drugs or bingo," she
said.

The officers say they'll offer her help with her addictions through a
social worker.