GROW-OPS ARE NOT THE ISSUE

While a nation paused to mourn the murder of four RCMP officers last
week in Mayerthorpe, Alberta, the debate their terrible deaths ignited
continued.

The debate began with a misguided premise, that the deaths had
something to do with a marijuana grow-op. Hours after the shooting,
RCMP Commissioner Guiliano Zaccardelli and his political boss Deputy
Prime Minister Anne McLellan condemned a suspected grow operation as
the root cause of the deaths.

McLellan, an Alberta MP and the politician responsible for the
misguided Liberal policy to decriminalize marijuana with Bill C38,
said she would consider making the penalty for cultivation even
tougher. As if a man in Jim Roszko's state of mind would have been
deterred in his murderous intent by that.

American officials, who are the prime drivers behind the futile and
wasteful war on drugs we see in our country, were quick to chime in.
Marc Raimondi, a spokesman with the U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement agency, said, "I think that if anything comes out of this,
it is the fact that growing and smuggling of marijuana is not a minor
offence, it is not a victimless offence. Look at this." Wrong.

As a member of the Vancouver police drug squad was quick to point out,
what happened to those four young cops wasn't about pot or grow-ops.

Within 24 hours Zaccardelli backed down: "I gave what I believed was
the best information I had knowing full well that at the time I didn't
have all the information," he said. "Clearly there's a lot of things
in there that, in hindsight, we will have to look at in a different
perspective."

One of those things is gun control and the attempt by Ottawa to
establish a meaningful gun registry. It was resisted at every point
and nowhere more than by the government of Alberta. Why anyone is
allowed to possess the kind of semi-automatic rife that Roszko used is
beyond me, but apparently they are legal. His firepower was much
greater than what the four RCMP officers had and it certainly was more
than their body armour was designed to handle.

But as we now know, and as the RCMP have know for years, Roszko was a
violent pedophile with a criminal record, an arsenal of weapons and a
habit of threatening people at gunpoint. The whole town, including the
cops, lived in fear of him. With or without an effective gun registry
the man would likely have been a menace.

This brings us to the most significant issue in this debate: the role
of the RCMP in this whole sorry matter. This point is most certainly
being raised by members of the force and those who have retired.

Given what was known of Roszko's history and the fact that he was at
large and likely armed, what were senior officers thinking in
assigning four junior officers to deal with him? Or were they thinking
anything at all?

The matter was at first minor. The RCMP were called in to assist in
repossessing a truck. They apparently stumbled on to a chop shop, the
illegal trade in stolen auto parts. Then they discovered a small
marijuana grow-op.

But it seems irresponsible in the extreme, given who Roszko was, to
handle any of this only using four rookies. What intelligence did the
RCMP have about where Roszko was? What was the plan? Did they not
suspect he would return to his home? They certainly seemed unprepared
for that likelihood.

What training were these young men given to handle this situation? Why
were they so lightly protected? And is the claim accurate that RCMP
training has been trimmed back in recent years?

We can only assume a full investigation will answer these questions
and tell all of us what role senior officers and RCMP policy played in
so seriously misjudging a threat that lead to the murder of four young
men.