Yukoners using safe communities act to report drug activity

The success of the Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods Act in getting Yukoners to report possible drug houses has prompted the territorial government to increase funding for enforcement of the two-year-old law.

Residents have been able to report illegal activity in their neighbourhoods since 2006, when the law (known as SCAN) was enacted.

The latest SCAN statistics, released Wednesday, show people made 37 complaints about 32 Yukon properties between July 1 and Sept. 30.

"Mostly what they're saying is that there's either excessive traffic, or there are people hanging out to buy drugs ... from the property and that they're not feeling safe with that activity going on nearby," Lesley Carberry, the Yukon government's director of crime prevention and policing, told CBC News on Wednesday.

If SCAN investigators find evidence of drug dealing, bootlegging, prostitution or other criminal activity, the perpetrators can be evicted from their rental properties or even removed from their homes by court order.

Carberry said complaints sometimes lead to neighbours who simply like to party a lot but are not dealing drugs.

However, if there is ongoing drug dealing in a house, and that activity is having a negative impact on the neighbourhood, then Carberry said investigators take action.

"There were eight evictions [between July 1 and Sept. 30]. The landlord does the eviction based on information that we give," Carberry said.

"There was one property where people stopped doing the activities, and we have no further interest in it, and there are three cases in which warnings were provided."

Overall, 267 complaints about 210 properties have come in since the SCAN office opened in December 2006. Those complaints have led to a total 36 evictions and 11 warnings to date.

The Yukon government has given the SCAN office $69,000 in additional funding. Carberry said the office will convert an existing part-time position into a full-time one. That will bring up the total number of full-time investigators to three.

"To date, we're keeping up with the demand fairly well," she said.

"We're really happy that Yukoners are calling in, and when they call in, we're pretty much being able to respond to the request and concerns in a timely manner."

Carberry said malicious or frivolous complaints by neighbours have not been a problem in the Yukon, with only a few complainants not having genuine reasons for phoning in.