Pubdate: Sun, 09 Dec 2007 Source: Edmonton Sun (CN AB) Copyright: 2007 Canoe Limited Partnership. Contact: http://www.edmontonsun.com Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/135 Author: Brookes Merritt WE'RE VIOLENT BUT SAFE Despite Rash Of Killings, Edmontonians Shouldn't Worry, Says Top City Drug Cop Four homicides in as many weeks doesn't mean people should start worrying about getting shot on their way home from work, says a top Edmonton drug cop. "Call it gangs, call it organized crime, call it whatever you want. In the end, it pretty much all comes down to drugs. If you don't traffic them and if you're not selling them on the street, statistically this city is still a pretty safe place," said Det. Clayton Sach of the RCMP/EPS Green Team. He busts grow-ops for a living and often rubs shoulders with the homicide cops - who have been busy chasing down leads in last month's after-hours club stabbing, a downtown apartment shooting on Dec. 1, the dumping of a burned body on the city's northside on Dec. 2 and the fatal shooting of a woman in a car Friday morning. "Drugs and violence usually go hand in hand," Sach said. "It used to be the harder drugs where we saw lots of guns ... I remember the first time we found a gun at a grow-op. We just about fell over dead. But we're starting to notice more with pot now and Green Team officers are on higher alert for weapons than we used to be. " Sach said Green Team members will now come across grow-ops where they also find substantial amounts of other drugs, like cocaine and ecstasy. "When you get into that kind of thing is when you start finding the sawed-off shotguns and handguns." Cops just unveiled a cache of weapons and cash seized in a $430,000 drug bust earlier this year following a pair of raids on city homes. They expressed concern over the growing trend among city dealers to stockpile weapons to protect themselves against would-be crooks. Sach said such stockpiling is less common in pot circles - perhaps because chronic pot users are less prone to the violent, erratic behaviour associated with the abuse of harder drugs - but is becoming more frequent because dealers are diversifying. "We had one bust not long ago in a 1,000-square-foot house where we found three handguns, $30,000 in cash, over 5,000 ecstasy tablets and a kilogram of cocaine in a Safeway bag." Such an array of drugs under one roof suggests multiple drug dealers are not only working, but living together. "I guess it's a sign of the times," Sach said. "The economy is booming and there's no shortage of demand. I'm sure most of these killings can eventually be linked back to the drug trade, but it's a different climate than it used to be." Edmonton has tallied 32 homicides this year. Calgary, meanwhile, has recorded 29 killings in 2007. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek