IT'S ABOUT SENTENCING

The death of four police officers is a tragedy. We need to learn a number
of lessons from the incident in Alberta last week. It's important to find
out exactly what happened, and how four Mounties were ambushed by one man
in a lonely farm area, far from help. Could it have been handled
differently? Can we learn something that will help keep other officers safer?

What we shouldn't be doing is making the incident something that it was
not. According to the information that's become available (and what has now
been corrected by the top RCMP officer in the country), the officers were
not at the farm to take down a grow-op. They were there to assist a bailiff
to repossess a vehicle. The marijuana - apparently 20 plants - was
something the officers came across when they got to the farm.

Perhaps the real story is length of a prison sentence that James Roszko,
who killed the officers, got when he was convicted in April 2000 of
repeatedly raping and molesting a young boy. The incidents had taken place
over a seven-year period, from when the boy was 10 until he was 17;
Roszko's sentence was for just 17 months for the crime.

Had the judge at that time levied a significant sentence for this very
significant crime, would we be here today, mourning four good men? It's a
question (how sentences are handed down) we need to ask far too often.
Roszko had a long criminal history, but frequently got off without having
to face any consequences.

The marijuana factor is being used to further some political agendas -
happening when it did, during the federal Liberal convention, the opponents
to legalizing marijuana have pushed for the whole thing to be dropped. We
question whether legalization would, on the whole, do any good. We saw how
futile that was in the early 1900s with the prohibition on liquor. In
reality, the big markets for marijuana are in the US and Europe - stopping
a few backyard grow-ops won't affect that.

This is a time to remember those officers, to remember their families, and
to learn from the incident.

We are fast losing the 'war on drugs', and arrests and fines don't seem to
be forcing drug dealers to change their ways.

That's why is so satisfying to be able to honour and thank people like Cst.
Ravi Gunasinghe for working the DARE program. Education might be the answer
to fighting this war on drugs, and it has to start with the young.