POT NOT THE PROBLEM HERE

Within hours of the horrific killing of four young RCMP officers by a
rifle-toting lunatic on an Alberta pot farm, everyone from politicians
to police and pundits was pointing fingers at the scourge of marijuana
grow operations.

"The issue of grow ops is not a Ma and Pa industry," RCMP Commissioner
Giuliano Zaccardelli told a news conference Thursday night.

"These are major serious threats to our society, and they are major
serious threats to the men and women in the front line who have to
deal with them."

Sadly, like most heinous crimes, the worst police massacre in our
modern history is not so easily explained.

Indeed, far from bringing reason to a society's grief, chasing
marijuana grow ops is to go looking in all the wrong places for the
causes and culprits of this unspeakable tragedy.

There is no doubt the proliferation of pot farms, as Zaccardelli put
it, is a spreading plague in our society.

In cities across the country, pot producers are setting up shop by the
thousands, sometimes in warehouses, but mostly in residential homes in
otherwise quiet, family neighbourhoods.

According to the latest estimates by Canadian law enforcement
agencies, the total annual marijuana production in this country is
hitting an astounding 2 billion grams, or something over $20 billion.

Little wonder it is an industry dominated by organized crime and other
underworld elements steeped in violent law-breaking. As the latest
RCMP criminal intelligence report states: "Home invasions,
drug-rip-offs, burglaries, assaults and murders, are only a few
examples of the dangers that are par for the course when dealing in
drugs."

Treacherous as the marijuana industry may be, however, it had little
to do with this week's horrendous bloodbath in a quonset hut in the
Alberta countryside.

In this case, the culprit was a madman, not marijuana.

The real issue is why a well-known nutbar named James Roszko was still
loose in society, not that he had pot plants growing in his garage.

It doesn't take a criminologist to know that Roszko was bound for
horror -- the only question was when the end would come, and just how
terrible it would be.

Just ask his own father.

"He is the devil," Roszko's dad told the Sun hours after the
shootings. "He's been in trouble so many other times, I hate it. I
don't want him as my son."

As the Sun's team of reporters on the scene this week discovered,
Roszko was a reclusive freak with a rap sheet that should have sounded
alarms throughout the criminal justice system.

Among other things, that lifetime of trouble included shooting at two
people who ventured on his property in 1999; holding a gun to a
neighbour's head; and enclosing his property in double-wire fences and
what police described as "booby-traps."

Roszko did some prison time -- for raping a family member repeatedly
over a six-year period.

"He's a nutcase, just insane," said one neighbour who was actually an
acquaintance of Roszko for 13 years until "he had me on his couch in
his house with a gun pointed at me."

But Roszko was not only "known to police," as they say in the official
reports.

He was known to hate the police, and none more than the
RCMP.

The questions are so obvious:

Why was this maniac not in captivity? Was there nothing at any stage
in all of his run-ins with the law that tripped a light in someone's
head enough to say, this man is a danger to society?

Why were two and then four young constables armed with nothing but
handguns sent into a likely confrontation with a nut known to have
guns, hate cops and be crazy enough to kill?

Confronted with precisely this question yesterday, an RCMP spokesman
stated: "We have to treat people with respect. And while we have to be
mindful of their past, if we see someone walking down the street that
we've had a past history with, we wouldn't automatically pull out our
guns. The situation has to be assessed and that will be part of our
review and recommendations will be put forward."

Cold comfort for four dead police officers.