CALGARY ONSIDE WITH ANGELS

Mayor Welcomes Volunteer Patrol Group

CALGARY -- The Guardian Angels may have been given the cold shoulder
in Toronto and other Canadian cities, but Calgary has laid out the
welcome mat for the controversial volunteer foot patrol group.

"In Toronto I got the fleabag treatment -- I might as well have been
a terrorist of al-Qaeda," Angels founder Curtis Sliwa said yesterday
after spending more than an hour with officials at the Calgary Police Service.

"Here, I was given the royal red-carpet treatment. It was like people
who are used to dealing with the streets talking shop."

Mr. Sliwa says he expects the U.S.-based group to set up a chapter in
Alberta's largest city in August with local members -- and that's
fine with Mayor Dave Bronconnier.

"I'm not afraid of taking advice from other people who've been in
other cities who can say 'Here's how you clean up problems,' " said
Mr. Bronconnier, who has been openly frustrated by increasing crime
and drug use.

"If the Guardian Angels or any other group has an idea of how we can
ensure we have a higher degree of public safety, I'm quite prepared to listen."

Some in the United States and abroad have accused the Guardian Angels
of being naive vigilantes, while others have supported their efforts
to make communities safer.

Mr. Bronconnier said he believes most people in Calgary would be
shocked at the growing level of open drug use and criminal activity
in the downtown core. He said crack cocaine and other drugs are
readily for sale day and night in Olympic Plaza, just across the
street from City Hall.

"I don't think we can continue to have our downtown continue to
spiral downward," said Mr. Bronconnier, noting that 120,000 people
work downtown and 30,000 live in the area.

In January, Toronto Mayor David Miller said he would rather hire more
police officers than allow the volunteer crime watchers known by
their signature red berets. Mr. Miller's comments were made just
weeks after the Boxing Day slaying of a teenage girl who was caught
in the crossfire between two rival gangs.

Mr. Bronconnier wants both.

Yesterday, he was pushing city council to use part of a $25.7-million
windfall from the province to bolster police presence. That money
would go toward adding 18 beat cops in the downtown core, more than
doubling the 12 officers who currently work the streets there. It
would also add security at Calgary's light rail transit stations.

Despite the positive comments from the mayor, Calgary police have not
signed off on the group.

Inspector Bob Couture said officials want to better examine the
group's track record and what it plans to do, including how
volunteers would be trained.

Mr. Sliwa said Calgary police were interested in an open discussion,
unlike other police agencies, which he says have treated him like a
"hemorrhoid in a red beret."

The veteran Angel said there would initially be up to two dozen
volunteers who would spend eight hours a week patrolling the downtown
core and some of the city's rougher neighbourhoods.

Mr. Sliwa, who visited Calgary twice in the late 1980s, was invited
to Alberta by local residents who have become angry and scared about
the growing violence in the province's two major cities. He said he
was shocked by what he saw this time in Calgary.

"There were things I don't even see in New York City any more," he
said. "People openly shooting up drugs, defiantly. People cracking
up, lighting up rock cocaine in glass pipes beaming themselves up to
Scotty and thinking they have a right to do that. And walking around
with weapons."

Police in Edmonton declined to meet with Mr. Sliwa during his Alberta visit.