SASKATOON – We are witnessing an “almost unparalleled” amount of synthetic drugs like fentanyl on the street says Saskatoon’s police chief. Clive Weighill told Global News it’s the demand for drugs that is driving up the rates for crimes like robbery and burglaries.
“We’ve seen crime increasing through the end of 2014, through 2015, and now 2016 again, and it’s not just in Saskatoon,“ said Weighill.
“I just had a meeting with the western Canadian chiefs, and it’s happening in Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, Prince Albert, Yorkton … its mainly attributable to methamphetamine, fentanyl type drugs, synthetic drugs where people are getting highly addicted very quickly, and they need money.”
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One recent high profile example in Saskatoon was Westmount Foods on 29th Street West, which was robbed by four people, one armed with a gun, in April – the third robbery at the store in four months. The owner, Hamid Khan, said he was considering giving up the business.
Weighill said he tried to do what he could to reassure Khan.
“I went out and met with him myself, I went out to his store and talked to him,” said Weighill. “We made sure we had extra patrols, officers stopping in and seeing him.”
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However, Weighill added they can’t do that with every business.
“Saskatoon is a safe city,” he said, “but we’ve just somehow got to get this synthetic drug problem … like I say, it’s not just Saskatoon.”
“It’s almost unparalleled, the amounts of drugs we’re seeing coming around our communities.”
He added it’s frustrating, because crime rates in Saskatoon had dropped roughly 40 per cent in the last decade, and now the rates are going in the wrong direction.
“We’re seeing a big increase in theft of vehicles, theft from vehicles, break and enters, and then the robberies that we’ve been seeing,” he said.
Weighill is also head of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, and in that regard he said police departments across the country are waiting for the new rules as Canada gets ready to legalize marijuana. However, Weighill said while some think it will be a free for all – the market will be highly regulated.
“It will still be regulated, who can grow it, who can sell it … the regulations haven’t been formed yet so we’re not sure how that is going to shake out.”
Last week an internal federal report warned that organized crime could still be involved even after pot is legalized, and Weighill said that remains a worry for police.
“That’s one of our biggest fears – there will be a price point … whoever sells it, and organized crime, whoever is selling marijuana right now, don’t want to get out of the business so they’ll cut their price a bit to undercut the sale price, and we’re still worried about that. So there still will be trafficking laws, just as there is now,” he said.
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And there are enforcement issues that haven’t even been settled yet, he said, like how to tell if someone is too impaired to drive.
“We haven’t’ seen a lot of it, Colorado has experienced a lot since they legalized marijuana, and the issue is you might be .06 for alcohol so you’re under the legal limit, and whatever the new limit is for drugs, you might be just a hair under that if you get tested for that, but when you combine the two you’re way over the limit – that’s the concern,” said Weighill.
He said coming up with a legal impairment level for driving under the influence of marijuana is just one of a number of questions that still need to be answered.
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