Cracking down on drugs
News
Posted 1 month ago
Josh Chalmers
Special to the Standard
Making a decision on how to combat drugs in the community can be a complex one for individual police forces.
In recent years for the Strathmore area RCMP, the decision has been to crack down on the supply or business side of drugs.
This is evidenced by a 250 per cent increase in 2009 in the number of drug trafficking and growing convictions by the RCMP in the area.
According to RCMP Staff Seargant Larry Marzinzik the increase is based on an increase in resources and not an increase in drugs in the community.
"That (drugs) has been pretty constant over the years," said Marzinzik.
"It's not saying that it's something that recently developed, but it's like anything else that as Strathmore grows the supply and demand will increase."
According to Marzinzik the increase has occurred as the RCMP have begun to concentrate on developing information and intelligence to move past just simple possession busts.
"So it's basically that our plain clothes and uniform members here have been just focusing on gathering intelligence and we've had a couple of operation plans put in to work different targets in the community," said Marzinizik.
"The drug investigations are more proactive rather than reactive, because we don't have too many people phoning in to give us good information, although we'll gladly take it, in regards to drug activity most of that information comes from our investigators."
This intelligence gathering takes a lot more time and effort than possession arrests, and an increase in manpower has been the leading factor in increasing of trafficking charges.
"We've been asking every year for more personnel and the town of Strathmore has stepped up to the plate quite nicely in the past three years in providing a bit more resources," said Marzinzik.
Marzinzik said that the majority of investigation is done by regular officers in the area in addition to their regular workload.
However, if they need help in developing information or processing warrants they can request help from tactical drug units in Calgary.
Those units can be either solely RCMP or integrated RCMP and Calgary Police Service units.
"That's time and manpower intense to try to develop those plans, you're not going to catch the drug traffickers with a uniformed member patrolling in a marked patrol car," said Marzinizik.
In addition to helping each other in terms of manpower Marzinzik said there is also a greater flow of information between jurisdictions that has helped investigations.
"I think it's just a general trend over the past three to five years with different jurisdictions working together and passing information on more than they have in the past," said Marzinzik.
He also pointed out that this is not unique to drug investigations.
"Things like vandalism and mischief are more local issues," said Marzinzik.
"But when you're talking about higher end property crimes, like theft of motor vehicles or drug issues or even break and enters they don't have boundaries."
As for what kind of drugs are prevalent in the community, Marzinzik said there was a little bit of everything.
"I would say we are looking at things such as cocaine, crack cocaine on a little bit of an increase," said Marzinzik.
"You're always going to see marijuana it's just a standard supply issue."
Marzinzik said that the RCMP is going to continue focusing on traffickers and tracking the statistics throughout the year.
With the first quarter statistics already in, the RCMP are looking over them and comparing them to last year's first quarter.
Marzinzik said the real analysis of the numbers should be done by the end of July.
"It's just that juggling act of seeing where we're spending our time," said Marzinzik.
