Perhaps as a starting point, when Chief White came to Ottawa, one of the first things he did was create a street crimes unit that was specifically designed to go out to deal with street-crime-level drug trafficking. The drug section still exists to deal with project and larger, more complex things, but he saw a need for street enforcement on the drug side. It has been hugely effective in terms of the number of arrests and convictions, and so on, but also in terms of providing community confidence that something was being done and there was a manifest way to do that.
The street crime officers will tell you that they continue to arrest the same people over and over again, therefore putting in mandatory minimum penalties that are tied to aggravating factors is a sound approach. It ties it to serious escalations in the crime--youth violence, and so on--and I think that has value. It has value for the police, but it also has value for the community, in that they see there is some clear consequence to the police actions.