Pubdate: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 Source: Sherwood Park News (CN AB) Copyright: 2004 Sherwood Park News Contact: http://www.sherwoodparknews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1730 Author: Julie Rohr ONE MOUNTIE TO FOCUS ON DRUGS In response to the rising thefts and drug offences, police have added a new member to their plainclothes unit to deal specifically with those crimes. "We've taken the initiative of establishing an intelligence person within our plainclothes unit," said Staff Sgt. Lee Findlay. "We're asking that person to correlate information with the hopes of dealing with drug issues and property crimes. We think that some of the drug issues and the property crimes are kind of correlated towards each other." Const. Darren Anderson, media liaison for the Strathcona County RCMP, indicated some aspects of policing are leaning more upon surveillance and observation. "Basically, the way policing is going is it's going to be more intelligence led," said Darren. "So we gather all this information, and we need somebody to try to correlate it . . . see if there's any trend or any areas we should be working on, and hopefully allocate it resources." The position was put into place earlier this year due to an overload on the plainclothes department in general. "In the last year, our plain clothes unit, which would have normally done that, were so heavily tasked with some major incidences," said Anderson, referring to two homicide investigations that took place last year. "They were so heavily tasked with some of these major problems that they just didn't have the time." Both Anderson and Findlay are hopeful the new intelligence position will help discover some new information about drug offences and other crimes in Sherwood Park. "I don't know what the end result will be, but that's what we're trying right now," said Findlay. - --- MAP posted-by: Jackl