Jeff Colbourne
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jul 03/98) - If Yellowknife doesn't get three new officers for a diamond division soon, problems with organized crime brought on by the diamond industry may get out of hand.

On Tuesday, RCMP Cpl. Ray Halwas said time is of the essence to find the money and get a RCMP diamond division set up in the city.

"It's already too late. There's a lot more that could be done now," said Halwas. "We should have had people dedicated and in place six months ago."

Organized crime is already in the city with the drug trade, he said, and we can expect the trade to expand and the problems to escalate if nothing is done.

"It's not something you can ever put an absolute stop to but you can certainly minimize the effect, but you need to be there to do it," said Halwas.

The decision to set up a diamond division, manned by a minimum of three officers lies squarely in Ottawa's hands but right now the wheels are turning slowly.

"Outside of people agreeing that we need them it boils down to funding. We haven't given up hope but, no, there hasn't been any movement forward in that at all," he said.

Halwas and his partner, Const. Susan Munn, head up the RCMP's federal enforcement division in Yellowknife. In their spare time over the last two years the two have spearheaded the diamond division by researching and travelling to other diamond-producing countries to find out how the industry is policed.

Waiting for three new officers has been frustrating them, he said, and it would be disappointing if all the work they have done over the last two years went to waste.

"Everything is sort of back burner now and that's all we can do. Do both jobs. Paying diamonds some attention and paying federal enforcement as much attention as we can and keep them both alive and hopefully we will have federal enforcement people and diamond people and everything will start accelerating again."

The cost of a designated RCMP division is estimated at $400,000 annually to cover salaries, living allowances and support services at the detachment.

If the division goes into operation, it will perform a number of duties, including diamond-related black-market and conspiracy investigations, diamond fingerprinting and identifying other security issues.

Halwas said he believes Ottawa's lack of effort to push for a diamond unit stems from the fact Yellowknife is so far removed geographically. Ottawa officials, he suggested, are at a point where Yellowknife was five years ago with respect to the discovery of diamonds -- still in awe.

Diamond legislation will also have to be introduced to allow better policing of the industry. So far nothing has been done.

"We're looking at the authorization to possess. It serves to protect the honest, genuine diamond dealers and also provides police with the power to recover and gives them a bit more latitude with respect to enforcement," said Halwas in an earlier interview.

Right now, if somebody possesses a quantity of rough diamonds that seems suspicious, there's nothing the RCMP can do short of talking to the suspect.

"That (legislation) doesn't look all that promising right now. Criminal Code amendments have not gone through yet. We expect they probably will but they're not going to be in place for Oct. 1," said Halwas.