Edmonton… A total of eight firearms – including assault rifles, suppressors, and over-capacity magazines – were seized as the result of an ALERT investigation in Edmonton and Fort McMurray. ALERT’s Edmonton organized crime and gang team seized the high-powered firearms following an investigation that primarily focused on two brothers. Alexander and Ryan Kurkut, both 27… Read more »
Red Deer… Cocaine, fentanyl, and an assortment of weapons were seized by ALERT following a short-term drug trafficking investigation in Red Deer. ALERT’s Red Deer organized crime and gang team seized the drugs and weapons after executing a search warrant on May 24, 2018. A 65-year-old man was arrested. The following items were seized from… Read more »
Lethbridge… A short-term investigation in Lethbridge has landed two suspected drug dealers in police custody, with ALERT also seizing $20,000 in drugs and a firearm. ALERT’s Lethbridge organized crime team made the seizure and arrests on May 24, 2018, after searching a home in the 300-block of 6A Avenue South. Lethbridge Police Service members provided… Read more »
Edmonton… An Edmonton man has been arrested by ALERT’s Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) Unit for allegedly sexually assaulting two children. Gerald Kenneth Steed was arrested on May 18, 2018. The 50-year-old man allegedly sexually assaulted two young children that were known to the accused in two separate instances. Steed can be described as a family… Read more »
Barry Balerud knows the important role intelligence can play in fighting crime. Now he and his team are working hard to make other law enforcement officials see it the same way. Balerud has been the director of Criminal Intelligence Service Alberta (CISA) for about two and a half years now. But his relationship with the… Read more »
Sgt. Colette Zazulak and many of her colleagues at the Integrated Threat and Risk Assessment Centre (ITRAC) know just how hectic it can be on the front lines of law enforcement. That’s why they are proud of the role they play behind the scenes. Zazulak is a certified threat assessor and the operations manager at… Read more »
After 17 years as a police officer, not much crosses Det. Kris Bombier’s desk that is unfamiliar to him. But when he was handed the file for a case of a man suspected of manufacturing machine guns in a shop just west of Edmonton, it was a rare occurrence. Bombier is a member of ALERT’s… Read more »
Inside ALERT’s Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) Unit office in Calgary, there’s a whiteboard on which investigators write down the status of files they’re working on. Between April and June 2017, though, as ICE was carrying out Operation Icebreaker, that whiteboard was fuller than usual. “We were taking photos [of the whiteboard] because there were just… Read more »
The numbers look alarming: Statistics from ALERT’s organized crime and gang team in Medicine Hat show a nearly tenfold increase in the amount of methamphetamine seized each year from 2015 to 2017. But, according to Staff Sgt. Cory Both, it’s not bad news. In fact, it’s an aggressive enforcement response to a trend that police… Read more »
