IT'S TIME, IT'S JUST TIME

The Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba has announced a "get
tough on crime" platform. The City of Winnipeg has done the same
thing. Missing in action are three other major players. The Province
of Manitoba, the federal government and most of our municipal
governments.

A couple of weeks ago, the Winnipeg Sun called for action as did many
other folks with an interest in maintaining peace on the streets of
Manitoba. It appears that it has taken the death of an innocent person
in a gangland shoot-out to bring a call for action. In fact, the PCs
were working on the program for months already and may have actually
delayed the announcement so as not to appear opportunistic. The PC
party, and the City of Winnipeg and Mayor Katz are to be commended for
coming out against crime.

In the movie Rudy, the biography of New York Mayor Rudy Guilliani, he
berates his fellow lawyers in the District Attorney's office. He
literally screams at them that, "The only way to control criminals is
to scare the living st out of the criminals."

Good point.

It's a point that has been lost on the Manitoba NDP. They sold the
courthouse that was set up to bust gangs. They've gotten really tough
on drunk driving which is a good thing. But at the same time, they
have shrunk local policing and haven't done a thing about making any
more jail space. The federal government has flushed enough money down
the drain registering farmers' shotguns to clean up crime across
Canada. Two billion dollars wasted on a make work project so they can
pretend to make the streets safer in Toronto and Montreal. As if
farmers' shotguns are being used to commit crime.

Closer to home, most local politicians are missing in action too.
They're too busy arguing about who will pay for the next sidewalk or
which road to gravel. Instead, they should be standing up to criminals
and crime in the ways that are open to them. For starters, they could
declare curfews. Instead of looking at ways to make curfews both fair
and effective they whine about how you can't paint people with the
same brush and how can you enforce a curfew. In answer to that please
tell why a 10 year old should be out on the street after midnight, or
after 10 p.m. for that matter. The municipalities have the authority
over curfews and they should be put in place. It would help parents
keep tabs on their kids, it would set reasonable community standards
and it would protect innocent kids from crossing paths with the night
prowling criminal element.

The next thing the towns could do is press hard with the RCMP to
enforce the rules that need to be enforced. It's the towns that pay
the RCMP contracts and yet it's rare to see the towns actually tell
the police what they want done. It's ludicrous, little or no direction
comes from the mayor's offices to the RCMP. Worse yet, drug
trafficking is commonly ignored on our streets and in our school hallways.

The "get tough" approach in Winnipeg will accomplish Rudy's goals with
criminals. In Winnipeg they plan to press in on the crime issues, they
will arrest suspected drug dealers for everything from spitting on the
sidewalk to improper parking even if they can't prove drug
trafficking.

Locally we could do more, much more, but it takes courage. We've
witnessed bloodshed in both rural and urban Manitoba, but we still
don't have much action. We've allowed criminals and law breakers to be
entirely too comfortable in our midst and it's time all levels of
government and all citizens heard the call to action.

Speak up, get tough and clean up the mess we are sliding into. It's
time folks, it's time.