Pubdate: Fri, 10 Aug 2001 Source: Province, The (CN BC) Copyright: 2001 The Province Contact: http://www.vancouverprovince.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/476 Author: Jason Proctor POLICE FEAR INNOCENT COULD SUFFER IN GANG WARS Les Bazso, The Province / Vancouver police leave the crime scene yesterday where they are investigating a drive-by shooting in the 1200-block East 59th Ave. Police from around the Lower Mainland will meet next week to deal with escalating gang wars. "We certainly do have an escalation at this point," Vancouver police spokesman Det. Scott Driemel said yesterday. "This is our biggest fear -- that somebody who is innocent might end up getting injured or killed." Driemel said police are trying to track the violence, which has spread to both the tight-knit and relatively small Indo-Canadian and Vietnamese communities. A drive-by shooting early yesterday in the 1200-block of East 59th Avenue is the latest in a series of attacks -- including two murders and several serious injuries. The shooting was the second in two weeks at the home of Ravinder Soomel, a 21-year-old facing trial in what police say was the drug-related murder last year of Gurpreet Singh Sohi. Simon Fraser University criminologist Rob Gordon said similar outbreaks of violence in the past have indicated turf wars --Eusually for control of the Lower Mainland's lucrative drug trade. "My understanding of what's going on here is not so much street gangs in the North American sense, but more disputes between individual criminal groups," said Gordon, who has studied Lower Mainland gangs extensively. "These guys are in business and they're involved primarily in the distribution of narcotics." Last week, an Indo-Canadian male was killed and another wounded in an attack at an East Vancouver barber shop. The wounded man was alleged to have been an associate of Bindy Johal, a local gangster murdered in 1998. - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart