TRIALS AND ERRORS

Angry taxpayers should be demanding answers from our Liberal masters in
Ottawa after Justice Doreen Sulyma's decision to toss out charges against
11 alleged gang members.

Because, after almost four years and untold millions of dollars - including
$750,000 for the initial police raids, a $2.1-million super-courtroom in
Edmonton and the feds estimating their costs at some $14.9 million to
prosecute the charges - there's precious little to show for all the dough.

The best we can figure is that of the original group charged, there have
been nine guilty pleas and/or deals with the Crown, 19 cases in which
individuals have had their charges either stayed or dropped, and just eight
individuals left facing charges.

That's not exactly a stellar scorecard, especially considering that the
remaining eight have launched a constitutional challenge to have their
cases tossed, citing unreasonable delays.

There are two separate issues here. The first is what Justice Sulyma called
the "shocking" failure of the Crown not to properly disclose all the
evidence. Particularly mindboggling was the fact that 36 boxes of evidence
were found in the RCMP's Edmonton headquarters and two boxes were somehow
stashed away in a city cop's basement.

Obviously, this doesn't reflect well on the beleaguered RCMP, a force that
has a sad and sorry record in Alberta when it comes to big court cases. One
high-profile example was the elaborate sting operation that was conducted
to nail Jason Dix with two murders. Dix was acquitted and the Mounties were
later raked by the judge who presided over Dix's wrongful prosecution suit.

The Mounties' investigation of Wiebo Ludwig was compromised by one blunder
after another, including the inability to properly run a surveillance tape.
And the cops had their knuckles rapped last year by a judge over their 1997
road checks of Hells Angels, a tactical manoeuvre that the courts found
unconstitutional.

The second issue is the white-elephant courtrooms being built for these
massive gang trials. Winnipeg built a $3.7-million courtroom similar to the
one in Edmonton for that city's gang trial of the century, but it was never
needed after 12 of the 13 defendants pleaded guilty to lesser charges.

Alberta Justice insists that the super-courtroom will continue to be used.
Well, it will only be properly used if the police can continue to make more
massive gang busts and then have them successfully prosecuted in court.

That means the Mounties and the federal Crown have to suck it up and start
putting the bad guys in jail where they belong. There are enough federal
boondoggles as it is without Ottawa wasting millions on botched gang
prosecutions.