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.
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