BATTLE TO CONTINUE

Police officers yesterday vowed to continue the battle against
organized crime despite the collapse of Alberta's biggest drug
prosecution. Yesterday, federal prosecutors announced they are not
appealing a judge's decision to stay charges against 11 alleged
members of the Trang gang and are staying charges against eight others.

"We will continued to go after those involved in organized crime and
will do what it takes to dismantle organized crime organizations,"
vowed Ottawa-based RCMP Chief Supt. Raf Souccar, director of the
force's drugs and organized crime directorate.

"You don't crack organized crime by plucking the little leaves from
tree."

And Edmonton Police Service deputy Chief Mike Bradshaw said the
investigation has yielded some positive results beyond the 24
convictions secured.

"A vast amount of intelligence was gathered on organized crime both in
the province and in the region," he said. "We had significant
reduction in some of the activities we saw around the city here."

Edmonton K-Division RCMP Chief Supt. Rod Knecht, head of criminal
operations for Alberta, said lessons learned from the collapsed cases
mean prosecutions are more likely to be successful in the future.

"Our systems in place five years ago didn't anticipate the volume of
information we were going to retrieve," he said. "You could equate it
to putting a thumb in a fire hose to try to stop it.

"If this same case was presented to us today, I don't think we would
have the challenges we faced five years ago."

He said new computer software and improved training for police
officers on how to handle major cases have been introduced as a result
of the Trang case.