Police shut down drug house on city’s northside
By Herald on May 12, 2021.
Fencing is erected around a northside drug house that was shut down Thursday following an investigation by Alberta Sheriffs and the Lethbridge Police Service. Herald photo by Al BeeberAl Beeber – Lethbridge Herald
Relief — at least temporarily — has come to neighbours of an northside drug house.
The Alberta Sheriff’s Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods unit obtained a court order and has shuttered the home along the 100-block of 19 St. N. for a period of 90 days.
Mike Letourneau, manager of SCAN South, told media Thursday an investigation was launched in June 2020 after complaints from residents about drug activity at the house.
“The volume of people attending was enormous,” he said as crews assembled wire fences around the older property on a tree-lined street.
“It was like Costco lining up,” he said of the activity at the property. That activity included intravenous drug usage in the driveway and threatening and violent behaviours of people involved with the house. On one occasion a fight between two women ended up with both getting in vehicles and engaging in a chase that ended with one car crashing into a fence.
One of that home’s occupant is the owner and while he has found temporary accommodations, he can return to his home when the court order expires, Letourneau said.
Between October, 2019 and February of this year, Lethbridge Police Service members responded to 33 incidents at the home. In June 2020, LPS got a search warrant which turned up small quantities of fentanyl, drug paraphernalia and pieces of stolen identification.
SCAN substantiated community complaints through its own investigation and while doing surveillance, saw drug transactions happening as well as numerous people visiting the home.
The neighbourhood was afraid to report the activity to SCAN and police, said Letourneau, adding that all their information stays with investigators and is not shared with the courts.
A Community Safety Order was obtained in Court of Queen’s Bench on May 7and remains in effect for a full year, which keeps the property under supervision until May 7, 2022.
People attending the home, said Letourneau, “had extensive criminal records.”
With the house vacated, fencing was put up around the perimeter of the home and windows boarded up to prevent entry. Several people were seen leaving the property with assorted items.
“We fully anticipate the owner to come back to the property which is not ideal for this neighbourhood,” Letourneau added.’
The property was the seventh drug house closed in Lethbridge by SCAN since 2019.
If the owner returns and drug activity continues, SCAN and LPS will become involved again, said LPS Sergeant Rod Pastoor, who is in charge of the LPS Crime Suppression Team.
While people had been charged with various offences at the property, they were mostly for petty crimes and being a nuisance, he said.
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20-19
The residents of this house will now simply move to another rental in the city, perhaps next door to you or I. Find them accommodations in the penitentiary instead.
almost an entire year of being aware before anything got done – ridiculous and entirely unacceptable. i respect the right of people to do as they choose to their body, but i do not accept that one’s actions should extend to making life miserable for another. almost a year!
what is it going to come to? are people going to need to become vigilante in order ensure peace in their neighbourhood? perhaps a sharing network needs to take place, so that people that are forced to live nearby to decrepit bums like that can enlist the support of others to drive away the scum. that place should have been slammed shut almost immediately.
meanwhile, what we have is another example that would support why drugs need to be legal, quality controlled, and affordable. drug houses and crime committed to buy drugs would be rendered moot.