NIGHT PATROL UNDERLINES CITY'S DRUG HORRORS

When a user smokes a rock of crack cocaine, it's the large number of blood
vessels in the lungs that absorb the drug so quickly, transporting it to
the brain and nerves.

The body's response is to produce high amounts of dopamine, the naturally
occuring "feel-good" neurotransmitter that creates the euphoric rush drug
users crave.

Beyond the many health risks associated with cocaine, chronic use can lead
to paranoia and even hallucinations. Toxicologists say long-term use can
eventually alter the brain's chemistry.

In reality, that looks like a woman trying to wriggle out of her own skin
because the bugs she thinks she sees crawling all over her arms are driving
her mad.

Saturday, Aug. 31,11:27 p.m., headed to the RCMP detachment cells.

"They're going to want me to search her," Const. Tracy Phillips says as she
pulls on her Mountie-issue, black leather gloves on the zippy drive back to
the Fourth Avenue office.

"She usually has needles everywhere," Phillips radios to officers already
handling Tina, an HIV-positive coke addict picked up on Main Street.
Phillips pauses. She's dealt with Tina before, as recently as the previous
week.

"Think infectious."

Cpl. Wayne Howse figures he came across the woman just after she smoked her
latest fix, flailing her arms like an off-kilter windmill.

Const. Spencer Hornoi and Kwanlin Dun First Nation community Const. Corey
Edzerza each have a black-gloved hand straining to pin one of Tina's hands
to the cement block wall so she can be searched.

Tugging and struggling to get away, she begs to be let go so she can pick
off the bugs.

"Please," she whimpers. "It feels sooooo gross."

"No bugs, Tina, they're all gone," Hornoi tries to convince her. In the
middle of cocaine-fuelled hallucinations, she's not buying his trick.

Phillips rummages through the lost and found T-shirt box for something to
preserve the woman's modesty while she removes her string-fastened top - no
one stays in cells with strings on their clothing they can hang themselves
with.

Meanwhile, Tina has her reprieve. She sits picking at the scabbed-over
needle marks crawling up and down her arms, removing the "bugs."

"You don't want that biting you or spitting at you," says Phillips.

Tina's dressed like any 24-year-old out for a Saturday night on the town: a
slinky, handkerchief of a top tied with crisscrossing strings across her
bare back, shiny bar pants and heeled, knee-high boots.

The goofy, multi-colourful socks with individual toes belie her youth. It's
the only thing that does.

"Anywhere from 20 to 40," a constable tells the dispatcher when he's asked
the woman's age to run her name on their computer system.

Tina's large purse is up-ended on a counter and officers paw through her
belongings, noting a plethora of toiletries and a Polaroid photo of herself
smiling in healthier days. Phillips remarks later the woman carries so much
with her because she's constantly moving between scruffy hotel rooms to
friends' couches.

Next to fall out are a homemade crack pipe - fashioned from an empty cough
syrup bottle and a syringe - and a lozenge case with assorted pills and
four "decks" or individually-wrapped portions of powdered cocaine. Another
deck is hidden in a knife sheath.

Tina's in hot water, the officers say. If she's already paid for the drugs,
she's out of a lot of money. But if she hasn't paid up yet, whoever she's
selling them for is going to be furious.

The officers seize the drugs and a $50-bill used to wrap cocaine. After
she's charged for drug possession and released in the morning, she'll leave
with 10 cents.

Const. Rick Aird nudges Phillips as she sprays her gloves with
disinfectant. "Did you guys hear that last transmission? There's an
emergency at Tim Hortons."

12:30 a.m. - Three car-loads of Mounties troop into the coffee shop only to
traipse right back out after the dispatcher passes on a call about teens
brawling at the Northland Mobile Park. Const. Cameron Long tells Phillips
to stay for coffee while the others deal with this call.

"I'll go," she yells at him, grinning. "I'll go," she shouts again,
slamming her car door to drown out Long.

"I'm not missin' out," she says.

Turns out the teenaged brawlers are nothing more than six boys barely old
enough to get into a PG-13 movie, sheepishly admitting to playing
"gladiator" in a playground sandbox, armed with long foam cylinders.

They smile and nod when she tells them to go home because they're making a din.

"Now!" says Phillips, clapping her black-gloved hands. They start moving.
The officers are back in their cars, whipping across the road to handle a
"domestic" in progress. A neighbour just saw a man slug his wife after she
ran out of their home. A woman comes out of the house, carrying a child.
One, or both, are crying.

Agitated and cursing as he's arrested, the husband is hustled to cells
where several officers stand around him while he's searched. Howse stands
by with one of the newly-issued Taser electric-shock guns ready, just in
case Michael gets out of hand.

Earlier in the evening, Const. Wayne Gork used a Taser electric-shock gun
in the cell block to subdue a break and enter suspect he'd arrested. On the
way to cells, the man repeatedly bashed his head against the Plexiglas
between him and the constable.

Once in a cell, he stomped around, violently agitated. That man blew .266,
more than three times the legal blood alcohol limit for driving, but he
probably had some other kind of drug in his system as well, Gork said then.
Drugs and booze would seem to be the combination in Michael's system as
well, only the 18 "nerve pills" he admits to taking along with too much
alcohol are having the opposite effect. Sitting on a bench while he removes
his boots, he blinks like he's just been jerked awake and hugs himself to
keep warm.

Auxiliary Const. Rick Smith's hand on Michael's arm is the only thing
keeping the man vertical as the flash bulb pops for his mug shot. He's
getting groggier by the minute, so a constable calls an ambulance. Michael
could be bluffing, but the last thing they need is for him to have a heart
attack in cells, says Howse.

1:23 a.m. - Back out on the road in a very large, very conspicuous SUV
marked with RCMP colours, Howse circles one of the downtown drug houses,
calling in licence plates to the dispatcher, who relays back the registered
owners' names and addresses.

It's information Howse will tuck away in a file for possible future use.
Two pickup trucks are parked around the crack house temporarily as
customers make their purchases inside. One cab driver waits, taxi running,
while another pulls up.

Howse circles again. And once more for good measure. A parked brown pickup
full of people drives off.

"I think he took the hint," Howse notes.

"Here comes another one," continues the corporal as he points out a woman
scurrying down the alley. "She's just wired."

Phillips cruises by and radios to her watch commander.

"Picking on (the drug house) again, eh Wayne?"

"If you took a drive by there, you'd understand," he replies.

"Lots of vehicles out there tonight?"

"Yeah, looks like it's a regular McDonald's."

Back in the cell block, lovingly called the Pink Palace for its colour or
the Crowbar Hotel for its purpose, Long says Whitehorse General Hospital
staff discovered Michael's pulse this evening is 122 beats per minute -
while he's sleeping. He wasn't bluffing about the drugs in his system. "Wow."

"Yeah, that's what they said," says Long.

4 a.m. - "You cost me 20 bucks," a cabbie tells Howse in line at Tim Hortons.

It would seem his customer chose to stay in the drug house rather than come
out while a cop hovered. After waiting for a half-hour, the cab driver
elected to just eat the fare and move on.

Editor's note: Tina and Michael are not their real names.