This is the first in a series about a momentous year for Watson Lake, as it morphed from a sleepy 1,550-person burgh labelled nationally as crime-ridden to a town staring down its problems and tackling them as a community.

The second and third parts will be published Monday and Tuesday.

WATSON LAKE Early last August, after a weekend of increasingly familiar crime, Sharon Miller picked up her phone and dialed a 911 of sorts.

The soon-to-be town councillor wasn't the first to place calls for help to a pair of Watson Lake notables Justice Minister Elaine Taylor and Premier Dennis Fentie.

The result was a public forum in Watson Lake last Aug. 22. Community members let fly with frustration about repeated break-ins, drug dealing and vandalism that was targeting tourists, the economically-starved town's last industry.

Numerous practical changes to stem the crime tide flowed out of that forum, but the biggest change is what community members call a dramatic shift toward a more positive attitude in Watson Lake.

But getting to that point took a wake-up call. For Watson Lake, Upper Liard and Lower Post, their shrieking alarm were last year's 'troubles.'

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Playing chauffeur on a Friday evening, RCMP Const. Tyler Codling is the first, but not the last, to give a Whitehorse reporter an explanation for Watson Lake's crime woes.

His previous posting, his first as a Mountie, was in Haines Junction, a town with half the people but with only 10 to 20 per cent of the crime.

In 2003, Watson cops were called 2,200 times and they locked up 388 prisoners. In one year in the Junction, Codling recalls 300 calls and a mere 13 people incarcerated.

'The primary difference is the economy,' said Codling. 'In Haines Junction, everybody's working.'

People seem to turn to booze when jobs dry up, he said, 'And when you turn to alcohol, the police start getting involved.'

Later that night, Const. Mark Janus will chat up everyone he can find to see who's drinking and where the parties are.

He stops a 19-year-old currently on probation with a judge's order not to drink. The teen's buddy has a 15-pack of Budweiser in each hand and they're en route to a party 'down the road somewheres.'

Later, Janus will find Budweiser cans strewn along the road nearby.

The 19-year-old apologizes 'for being an a--hole' the week before. He'd been drinking and was 'verbally abusive' when officers busted him. Sober he's a nice enough kid, said Janus, but pour booze in him and he's a 'terror.'

'There's more places to buy booze than you can buy milk,' said Janus, who knows because the cops counted. 'That's sick.'

Janus wheels up to a couple out for a nighttime stroll. They're sober now, but the woman tends to hit her partner when she drinks, said Janus. Her boyfriend usually gets in trouble, though, as she generally gets to the phone first.

The town's longtime doctor, Said Secerbegovic, suggested more people working would cut down on the drinking, if simply because there'd be less time in the day to drink.

Municipal and business leaders also mention the town's long economic slide coinciding with rising crime.

'There is none,' Mayor Richard Durocher said of the economy over a cup of coffee. 'It breeds for all kinds of things to happen.

'We're firm believers that the economy has to turn around here,' continued the mayor, also the deputy fire chief and a weigh scale employee. 'People have to have a sense of hope.'

Many of the people interviewed have lived two or more decades in Watson Lake, and they've seen the good times when three mines and as many sawmills boomed.

They've also seen the work dry up before too, but the latest slide has been the longest and worst. There's no industry to speak of, and a small service sector catering to highway travellers, along with government jobs, are all that feed the town.

'You can't separate economy and crime,' said Pat Irvine, a hotelier and local chamber of commerce president. 'You just can't.'

Years of up and down and lots of down economies take their toll, and it's demoralizing for those left behind when families pack up and leave, said Miller.

'And eventually it all comes to a head,' she said. When social problems are added to the mix, 'it's just a recipe for disaster.'

The Yukon has the nation's third-highest crime rate, behind the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. This territory also has the most police officers per capita, perhaps leading to more charges because of increased manpower, and the small population figures can also help skew the stats.

But even with a cautious eye at the numbers, they suggest Watson Lake has more than its share of mayhem.

Watson Lake RCMP officers are among the Yukon's busiest, second only to Whitehorse. In 2003, their phone rang 1.4 times for every man, woman and child.

Those 2,200 calls for service don't necessarily mean the town had that many crimes, but one or more of the town's nine Mounties had to investigate every incident.

Of those calls, 28 per cent were for disturbance reports, calls that usually involve booze or drugs. Assaults were reported 197 times, not including the 17 reported sexual assaults. Suspected break-ins had residents contacting the police 89 times, and officers went looking for 47 drunk drivers.

Ironically, though the public outcry came in 2003, 2002 was a worse year for crime based on calls for service alone.

That year, 2,400 calls for service resulted in 1,321 actual crimes and 474 visitors to RCMP cells. In the previous seven years, the average number of founded crimes was 834.

While the entire territory's 2002 crime rate was 32 crimes per 100 people, Watson Lake's was the highest at about 84 per 100 residents, including 162 total violent offences, 30 of which were spousal assaults.

Whitehorse, with its 22,000 residents, had 75 founded spousal attacks reported to police in 2002. Dawson City, with a couple hundred more residents than Watson, had nine reported spousal assaults that year. Three quarters of all such cases involved alcohol.

Between 2000 and 2002, Watson Lake's emergency shelter for women and children, Help and Hope, averaged 470 bed nights annually, though that's not the number of people who use the shelter. If one person stays for 10 days, it counts as 10 bed nights.

But in the 2002-03 year, the bed nights went up to 598, and in 2003-04, they continued that trend to 725 bed nights.

Last year, September through November saw the highest number of bed nights at the shelter for the year.

About half of all emergency room visitors are there because of booze, said Dr. Secerbegovic. And that's an improvement.

Years ago, the liquor board asked Secerbegovic about the number of alcohol-related injuries in Upper Liard. He looked at 20 emergency visits from that community and found alcohol connected to 80 per cent.

He discovered the same in 20 random Lower Post, B.C. cases, and to see if there was a difference between the white and native populations, he pulled the same number from predominantly-white Watson Lake. It scored 80 per cent too.

And while alcohol is still the drug of choice, cocaine shipped from Outside leaving violence and property crime like home burglaries in its wake is making an impact too.

Illegal drugs aren't the only problem, as prescription medication is sold on the black market.

Starting last summer, Watson's three doctors made a concerted effort to reduce the amount of codeine, Ativan and valium they handed out at any one time.

One patient told Secerbegovic he'd been asked to part with his T3s for $5 each.

'This type of thing was rife,' he said, recalling one patient given 100 T3s. Over the same three months, he got 1,300 in Whitehorse.

Notes Janus about the powerful painkillers: 'There's been points where we've taken pocketfuls out of them (when arresting suspects).'

But last year, the crime hit home literally.

Along with break-ins to businesses, about a dozen homes were burglarized over a matter of weeks. Some homes were trashed, said Durocher, adding a friend's home had $20,000 in damage.

Yukon judges repeatedly note home break-ins have the same results as violent crime fear, suspicion and a lost sense of security in the one place people should feel safe.

'We got to the point where people would let us know when they were going out of town,' said Codling. 'We kept a list of empty residences.'

The RCMP had a pretty good idea early on who their burglar was, but little evidence left at crime scenes and the seemingly random homes being hit made catching the suspect difficult.

A transient man was arrested late in the year and charged in connection to three burglaries. The home break-ins stopped after his arrest, noted MacDonald.

'They think we're not responding,' Codling said of the perception that comes when arrests take time in coming. 'That's a common misconception.'

Mountie morale suffered. Before last summer, officers could be found in the detachment on their days off, catching up on their files, said Const. Dean Hoogland, who's served in Watson Lake for three years. But last year, off-duty officers made themselves scarce.

Detachment commander Sgt. Larry MacDonald compared the RCMP's mood to the Alamo.

'It was like a stockade,' MacDonald said.

Compounding the situation was vandalism, and in at least one case, violence, against tourists, one of the town's last revenue generators.

Late last May, a pair of masked men slashed tires and smashed windows of two camper vehicles in the territorial campground before demanding cash and fleeing. They've never been caught.

Then in late June, then-Liard First Nation chief Daniel Morris assaulted his wife in a vicious two-hour attack that left her in hospital for three days and the community in the spotlight for months, particularly after the February 2004 sentencing that saw Morris given two years' probation.

Morris' case 'took the picture and stood it on its head,' said Miller.