FIGHT CRIME WITH HUMANITY

Drug pushers, get out. Get of of this city, get out of this province. We
don't want drug dealers in our society, says Edmonton Mayor Bill Smith in
one of the dumber municipal responses to the rising tide of crime in his
city, and in all Alberta cities generally.

Most of the serious crimes in our society can be linked to the drug trade.
Car thefts, thefts from homes, robberies with violence or threats of
violence, prostitution, murder - if you see a headline detailing these
things, it's almost certain that by the time the story is played to
completion, the illegal drug trade will be connected to it.

But devaluing the humanity of the people in the drug trade is devaluing the
humanity of their growing list of victims.

Drug dealers and gang members don't care about anything other than money. A
person means nothing to them. Smith's carefully-planned response to this
outrage (he issued his ultimatum at a specially-called press conference
last week) was to join them and say nobody's life and liberty have value
anymore.

Let's declare zero tolerance, he says. Let's tell the judges to get tough.
Let's run these pushers out of town. It's surprising he stopped short of
suggesting we arm the local citizenry and declare an open season. We could
be just like the worst of the inner cities of major U.S. centres where by
the time a child has finished Grade 6, he's probably witnessed a gun killing.

The outrage on Smith's part is genuine - and widely shared. Over the
weekend several other mayors voiced support for Smith's position.

There have been no less than 14 drug-related murders in Edmonton since
2002. The violence and threats of violence and property loss has been
astronomical - and almost all of it is drug-related.

Red Deer, really, is different only in scale and intensity. The lack of
basic human compassion among drug dealers here is exactly the same.

But getting tough and running them out of town is a pathetically thin
answer. The reason we have these vicious drug dealers in our neighbourhoods
is because that's where their customers live. And there are more drug users
in our office buildings, stores and schools than most mayors might care to
admit.

There is huge money to be made in the drug trade. The crime that supports
this criminal network - robberies, car thefts, holding up convenience
stores, prostitution - all of it pays, big time.

Count that in addition to the human losses to both the victims of crime and
the drug users themselves.

Here's a consideration for people who can get past their first impulses
when they are confronted by the evils of the drug trade: you could pour $10
million into policing and courts in Red Deer (probably $100 million in a
city as big as Edmonton) and not do the good that $200,000 could do in a
methadone clinic. You could put a similar amount into a detox centre and
begin attacking the demand side of the drug trade.

Should the courts get tougher on drug dealers and people who use violence
to either buy drugs or take over turf to sell drugs? From the victim's
side, it seems you can never get tough enough. Violence always elicits more
violence.

But if you want to be on the side of the good guys, you have to go further
than that. Whatever we do about this insane surge of crime in our cities,
we have to remain humans ourselves.

We are people with rights. We have to remember that. We can only preserve
our own value as people by stopping ourselves from seeing others as less
than human. How difficult that is can be seen in Smith's outburst, and that
of his supporters.

Drug pushers, we are serious. In Red Deer, we are creating a new master
plan to fight crime. We're going to pursue you with all the resources we
can put to the job. But more, we're going to deprive you of customers.
We're going to get your current customers away from you and prevent you
from finding new ones.

If we really value human life.