….. they don’t “eliminate” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Police statistics tell the rest of the story
Date: Jan 19, 2007 10:00 AM
PUBLICATION: The Leader-Post (Regina)
DATE: 2007.01.19
EDITION: Final
SECTION: News
PAGE: F6
BYLINE: April Lindgren
SOURCE: CanWest News Service
DATELINE: TORONTO
WORD COUNT: 677

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Ontario cracks down

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TORONTO — Bootleggers who buy thousands of bottles of rye, vodka and
other alcohol from Ontario government liquor stores and resell them for
as much as $300 a bottle in “dry” aboriginal communities are doing a
booming business in the north, say the authorities trying to curb the
practice.

“It’s happening on a massive scale primarily when the winter road is in
place but it happens year-round,” said Paul Trivett, the chief of police
at the Thunder Bay, Ont., headquarters of the Nishnawbe-Aski Police
Service.

“This year, the winter road network is just starting to open up. Last
week, officers seized 200 bottles — the 375-millilitre size — intended
for sale in the communities along James Bay. Later on the same day, they
seized a few dozen bottles and some beer.”

In a bid to counter the bootlegging, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario
has temporarily halted sales of mickey-sized bottles from its
northernmost stores. Police, meanwhile, have stepped up patrols on the
ice roads accessing the remote communities and adopted a zero-tolerance
approach to the smuggling.

Investigators said last week’s busts involved alcohol purchased from the
Liquor Control Board of Ontario outlet in Moosonee, where the ice road
begins. It was seized from two separate convoys of snow machines that
were intercepted about 290 kilometres away on the outskirts of
Attawapiskat, an aboriginal community of 1,600 that has been officially
alcohol-free for more than two decades.

“In my community, not many people are employed so when the welfare is
paid, you will see young people walking around drunk on the roads for
two days,” Attawapiskat Chief Mike Carpenter said. “It’s never dry.”

Carpenter said a mickey of bootlegged liquor that costs $13 at the LCBO
can be resold in Attawapiskat for $50 to $100 in the winter, when for
about two months the ice roads make it easier to haul in heavy loads by
snow machine or truck. The rest of the year, when access to the reserves
is limited to air travel, bootleg booze is at a premium.

“In the summer, I’ve heard it go up as high as $300 a mickey,” the
chief
said.

Just how much bootlegging is taking place is difficult to measure, but
there a few clues.

LCBO outlets in the small northern communities of Moosonee and Red Lake,
for instance, have disproportionately high sales of full cases (24
bottles) of mickeys.

The LCBO outlet in Moosonee last year sold 73,000 mickeys — or nearly
five per cent of all mickeys sold in the liquor agency’s 150-store
northern region. The number is extremely high for a customer base that
consists of 5,000 people of Moosonee and the “wet” reserves of Moose
Factory and Peawanuck. Another 4,600 live northeast along the James Bay
coast in Fort Albany, Kashechewan and Attawapiskat — alcohol-free
communities.

By comparison, all 12 LCBO outlets in London, Ont., a city of 330,000,
sold 343,000 mickeys last year.

Trivett said mickeys are the bottle size of choice because they are
easier to conceal and the smaller amount is more affordable at inflated
bootleg prices.

Officers have seized bottles shipped in by mail, frozen in hamburger,
buried in boxes of powdered soap or repackaged and relabeled in cans of
pea soup.

Patrick Ford, director of LCBO corporate policy, said the provincial
liquor agency, in co-operation with police, halted new mickey shipments
to LCBO outlets in Moosonee, Red Lake, Pickle Lake, Sioux Lookout,
Balmertown and Savant Lake from December through to the spring when the
ice roads close and that existing inventory is almost depleted.

The pilot project, he said, will determine whether illegal alcohol sales
subside in the targeted communities or whether bootleggers simply switch
to bigger bottles or move further south to purchase supplies.

“Other jurisdictions have similar issues — in the Prairies and
B.C….but we haven’t found any information on anybody trying any new
initiatives. People we’ve contacted are curious to see what we find,”
Ford said.

Police statistics tell the rest of the story. Over the past 21/2 years,
officers responsible for policing the approximately 10,000 people in the
James Bay aboriginal communities dealt with 1,400 alcohol-related
occurrences. The list includes four murders, three attempted murders, 10
suicides, 90 aggravated assaults, 109 sexual assaults and 31 firearms
offences. Four people froze to death and two more died in fires.

The Second Amendment IS Homeland Security !