CITY COPS TO TRACK DRUG TIES TO CRIMES

Ask any cop and they will tell you that the vast majority of people
they arrest have a substance-abuse problem.

And soon the Edmonton Police Service will have the hard data to prove it.

Once the EPS's new record management system is in place, city cops
will start recording the involvement of drugs and alcohol in the
crimes they're investigating.

Drug-Crime Connection

The project will track the "nexus between drugs and alcohol and crime
and crime types," said acting Staff Sgt. Darcy Strang, who's with the
drug section.

"Anecdotally police are always saying drugs and alcohol are at the
root of a lot of the crimes out there and we're not able to give
information that's able to support those anecdotes.

"We want to have something that's more concrete."

Those statistics, which will be calculated quarterly with the first
year providing the baseline, will provide another tool to help police
fight crime.

"It may change the way we do policing in relation to certain crime
types," Strang said.

It's also data that can be shared with other agencies, he said.

For example, police could give the Alberta Alcohol and Drug Abuse
Commission statistics gathered on the presence of alcohol in the
family violence calls they respond to.

The record-keeping system has been designed to be as simple as possible.

Five Categories

There are five possible categories that will be considered by police
when recording the involvement between drugs or alcohol in a crime,
Strang said. Among the categories: if someone admits they committed a
crime because of drugs , or if drugs were seized while a warrant was executed.

Strang said there's a lot of interest from other police agencies in
the drug and crime-tracking project, which isn't being done elsewhere.