More than $80,000 in cash, bank draft and other property seized during the city’s largest drug bust in history is going towards funding community crime prevention projects across the province.
The money was part of a bust The Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team (ALERT) conducted in Dec. 2022, where more than $1 million worth of meth, cocaine and fentanyl were seized.
The Alberta Government’s Civil Forfeiture Office brought a court application to forfeit the cash, bank drafts and a Subaru vehicle registered to Patrick Rodney as proceeds or instruments of drug trafficking. Forfeiture was granted by order of the Court of King’s Bench on Jan. 17, 2024.
“Civil forfeiture helps take the profit out of crime. Organized crime inflicts so much harm on communities and this provides a chance for drug money to be made good through support for community crime prevention initiatives,” said acting sergeant Peter Clarke, ALERT’s civil forfeiture liaison.
The forfeiture is separate from criminal proceedings and Rodney’s criminal charges are still before the courts. He is facing 20 offences related to drugs and firearms and is scheduled for arraignment in Lethbridge on Feb. 26.
Civil forfeiture requests from ALERT have resulted in more than $2.4 million going into crime prevention programs over the past three years.
The money funded programs focused on things like restorative justice, domestic and sexual violence intervention a human trafficking exit program and youth programs.