SUBMITTED PHOTO Keith Keller has started taking photos of the people, like this person pictured, who walk across his lawn to reach a nearby drug house in Crescent Heights.
gslade@medicinehatnews.com@MHNGillianSlade
A neighbour near a Crescent Heights drug house says if top officials at Medicine Hat Police Service were living next door the problem would have been addressed years ago.
“If this house was next door to Insp. Brent Secondiak, how long would it be operating?” asks Darcy Knodel. “It’s never a problem when it is in someone else’s area.”
Secondiak estimates police have responded “dozens of times” to this specific house for things such as domestic disputes, suspicious vehicles, drug activity, search warrants, expired licence and unauthorized plates.
Even to execute a search warrant there must be reasonable grounds to believe there is a quantity of drugs at the house, said Secondiak. A couple grams of cocaine or methamphetamine would only be simple possession.
“So when we do search warrants we want to make sure that they’re viable and there’s going to be charges … rather than just appease the neighbourhood. We have to make sure there’s criminal offence and we can substantiate the offence so that it is prosecutable.”
Knodel says he was told there was no point in arresting someone at the house if they were going to be out again in a week.
“So then you arrest them. What’s your job description – to uphold the law,” said Knodel. “It’s extremely frustrating.”
Knodel says if changes to the law are needed at a local level, or a provincial level, to address drug houses like this, we should get working on that. To just coast along as though police have their hands tied is not acceptable to him.
He believes this is the only way to address all the drug houses in the city. Otherwise this particular drug house is shut down and the trouble simply escalates and affects other Hatters, said Knodel.
Keith Keller says police have been busy in the area this past week. The trailer in the driveway of the drug house, together with the occupant, has gone. This is the trailer that had “Open” and Closed” signs.
“The traffic is not as heavy since … (they) left but it is still there. I have people crossing my lawn still,” said Keller. “I’ve been calling the police every time so they have a record of it.”
Other occupants of the drug house have been tidying up the yard, said Keller.
“Somebody said something. There was an officer standing in the road in the alley watching,” said Keller. “The police have been around and knocked door to door. There was two of them and they were here right until it got dark out.”
He says the property is apparently owned by someone in Saskatchewan who has not been in the area for some time.
Secondiak has already said this drug house has been brought to the attention of SCAN (Safer Community And Neighbourhoods) in Calgary. They work to actually shut down a house but it takes time.
Knodel says issues with the house go all the way back to a fire in the garage many years ago. It appeared to have been started because of some grow-op equipment, based on all the garbage that was moved out at the time.
The next thing that raised some questions was all the garbage in the back alley. Knodel says there were more TVs and computers, furniture and appliances than anyone could use in a lifetime.
Knodel says there was a notice on the garbage bin indicating it was too heavy to be picked up. After that he noticed his own bins were being used for stuff that was not his.
A small blue suitcase was placed next to his bin one day and inside were forms for vehicle and equipment inspections that belonged to a local construction company. When Knodel phoned the construction company he discovered that one of their trucks had been stolen the week before. The truck had been recovered but not the content of the vehicle.
The constant flow of traffic in the back lane has been an issue, and in particular people cutting through his yard as a shortcut.
They constantly left the gate unlatched. At one point someone even broke the latch on the back gate. Knodel had words with the person living in the drug house and that seemed to stop the shortcuts – for that individual.
Knodel has also noticed the big cleanup outside recently.
“It’s a lot better than it was,” said Knodel.
