DAY TO MOURN SLAIN OFFICERS

They are always so visible in our communities that we sometimes take them
for granted as they patrol the streets and highways of this country.

When most of us leave our families in the morning to go work, we can be
reasonably confident we will not be putting our lives on the line in doing
our jobs. Police officers do not have that assurance. We know they don't,
but tend to relegate it to the back of our minds.

But not today. Not after four RCMP officers, including Peter Schiemann, 25,
of Petrolia, were shot to death during a raid on a marijuana grow-op in
Alberta Thursday. Not after RCMP Assistant Commissioner Bill Sweeney tells
us one has to go back to 1885 in the force's history and the Northwest
Rebellion to find carnage of police officers of this magnitude.

Lest anyone think this is an isolated case in the faraway hamlet of
Rochefort Bridge most Ontarians have never heard of, think again.

Det.-Insp. Frank Elbers, deputy director in charge of the Ontario
Provincial Police's drug enforcement section in Orillia, has shocking
statistics on grow-ops in this province.

In the last three years, OPP drug officers across Ontario have executed
1,822 raids on indoor and outdoor grow-ops, destroyed 664,000 marijuana
plants and seized 1,938 weapons.

Drugs are a multi-billion-dollar business and those involved want to
protect it, explains Elbers of the shocking weapons cache.

But the danger goes beyond guns. Arresting officers must cope with booby
traps, dangerous electrical wiring rigged up to serve the grow-ops and
chemicals.

In the Alberta tragedy, officers apparently faced yet another hazard -- a
crazed gunman with a simmering hatred for police.

Today, it's time to mourn the victims of Alberta gunman James Roszko, 47,
who later took his own life. (Roszko was described by his estranged father,
Bill, as a "wicked devil.")

Out of uniform, officers have similar aspirations and profiles to the
people they protect.

One of the slain officers, 29-year-old Const. Brock Myrol, had just started
a new career and a new life. Days after graduating from the RCMP training
academy in Regina, he was posted to Mayerthorpe, Alta., on Feb. 14.

There, he would tell the local Freelancer newspaper: "I wanted the
opportunity to work with people and be able to make a difference."

In his personal life, at Christmas he became engaged to his girlfriend,
Anjila, who joined him at Mayerthorpe. He was a young man with a new career
and life ahead of him. Now, he's gone, along with three fellow officers.

Next time you see an officer, think of the risks he or she faces. And think
of their families, who worry they won't come safely home.