Northeast drug den shut down after months of activity
Posted Mar 27, 2015 6:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
After months of illegal activity at a northeast drug den in Marlborough Park, the troubled home has been shut down.
Calgary police and the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams closed it following a four-month investigation, after ALERT’S Safer Communities and Neighbourhood (SCAN) team received numerous complaints starting back in November.
During that span, police were called to the home on Malvert Court 27 times and three of the calls dealt with suspected overdose deaths.
At a police stop in December, heroin, needles, paraphernalia and other stolen property were found inside and Insp. Mike Letourneau with SCAN said it’s a victory for the community.
Speaking to reporters Friday, he described the home as investigators pulled buckets of syringes from inside.
“It’s trashed,” he said. “There’s needles, over 100 different needles, used needles, needles that haven’t been used, probably another 50, you can’t step anywhere in this house without stepping on either glass, garbage or needles.”
After beginning the investigation in November, SCAN sent a warning letter to homeowner, Lindsay Parker, but the problem got worse and activity picked up.
Officials were eventually granted a Community Safety Order, allowing officials to take control of the home.
Charges were laid back in December and it’s not exactly how many people were living in the house during the four months with so much foot traffic going on.
Cst. Tracey Renaud said hopefully activity in the community will get back to normal.
“People expect to be able to be out and walking their dogs or have their children out playing without worrying about people coming to this house,” she said.
Marlborough Park Block Watch President Mary Ryan credited SCAN’s involvement with helping the community, recalling one occasion when she called a landlord who had drug dealers in their home.
“I said hey, you’ve got drug dealers living in your house and isn’t that a problem for you and he said what do you care?” she said. “I said well I care because I have syringes on my lawn and he said, well I don’t care because they pay the rent.”
“Now I phone a landlord and I say I’m getting to phone SCAN on your house and they say don’t do that, we’ll get them out of there.”
Ryan has been in her role since 2007 and said the attitude of residents has been changing for the better.
“You have to take neighbourhoods like this back, you just have to, you can’t let them just fall apart because that’s just going to get worse,” she said.
The home will be closed for 90 days with the tenant barred from entering or occupying it and the locks will be changed, along with windows and doors boarded and the property fenced.
Letourneau said hopefully after three months, the bank will have its foreclosure and a sale of the home will proceed.
