By Ashley Wiebe

Notorious drug house back in owner’s possession

Dec 7, 2016 | 12:00 AM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — A well-known drug house is back in the hands of its owner.

Earlier this year, police and the province seized the home on the Southeast Hill.

Officers had been called to the house numerous times over the last eight years and decided to take a different approach.

While the seizure has been lifted, police aren’t about to take the Aberdeen Street residence off their radar just yet.

“Hand-to-hand drugs sales just in front of the daycare and in front of our street, right beside the window, right where my daughter was playing. Those types of things that you shouldn’t really want to see in your neighbourhood that happened all the time,” said Chris Kohlman, who has lived next door to the notorious drug house for four years.

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But all of that activity has apparently stopped.

The last 90 days came as a nice, quiet change for residents on Aberdeen Street.

“When you live here for so long and you’re use to what’s going on next door, it’s pretty amazing to us how quiet it got after they closed it,” he said.

The home was seized by government officials back in September.

It was the first time police partnered with the Safe Communities and Neighbourhoods unit.

Sergeant Stacey Kesler said traditional police tactics weren’t working.

“In the years previous, we had tried other techniques such as search warrants and traditional police enforcement techniques, however they just proved to not deal with the issue and crime and the problems continued to persist,” Kesler said.

According to police, 88 per cent of crime in the area this year was linked to the Aberdeen address.

Since the seizure, Kesler said that number has dropped down to .02 per cent.

“There was only four crimes reported during those 90 days and two of which resulted in charges which would have not been attributed to that address,” he said.

“We never really gave it a second thought about how much traffic there is and how nuisance behaviors there are until it actually stops,” Kohlman said.

The house is still under the community safety order, which means police will be keeping an eye on it to see if any of the same activity starts up again.

“That order is in place until August 12th of 2017 and if there is any repeat activity, there’s a strong likelihood that the house will be seized,” Kesler said.

The fence and boards have been removed and the owner was handed the keys on December 1st.

But Kohlman said he hasn’t noticed anything different.

“It has been a relief,” he said. “But more importantly, I’m glad that we’ve finally been able to do something about this issue and I sincerely hope that any other problem houses get the message that this kind of behaviour is not acceptable in our community.”