ONE MOUNTIE TO FOCUS ON DRUGS

In response to the rising thefts and drug offences, police have added a new
member to their plainclothes unit to deal specifically with those crimes.

"We've taken the initiative of establishing an intelligence person within
our plainclothes unit," said Staff Sgt. Lee Findlay.

"We're asking that person to correlate information with the hopes of
dealing with drug issues and property crimes. We think that some of the
drug issues and the property crimes are kind of correlated towards each other."

Const. Darren Anderson, media liaison for the Strathcona County RCMP,
indicated some aspects of policing are leaning more upon surveillance and
observation.

"Basically, the way policing is going is it's going to be more intelligence
led," said Darren. "So we gather all this information, and we need somebody
to try to correlate it . . . see if there's any trend or any areas we
should be working on, and hopefully allocate it resources."

The position was put into place earlier this year due to an overload on the
plainclothes department in general.

"In the last year, our plain clothes unit, which would have normally done
that, were so heavily tasked with some major incidences," said Anderson,
referring to two homicide investigations that took place last year.

"They were so heavily tasked with some of these major problems that they
just didn't have the time."

Both Anderson and Findlay are hopeful the new intelligence position will
help discover some new information about drug offences and other crimes in
Sherwood Park.

"I don't know what the end result will be, but that's what we're trying
right now," said Findlay.