Pubdate: Mon, 10 May 2004
Source: Delta Optimist (CN BC)
Copyright: 2004 Lower Mainland Publishing Group Inc
Contact:  http://www.delta-optimist.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1265
Author: Maureen Gulyas

CRIME ANALYST IS PROVING POPULAR

The addition of a crime analyst at the Delta police department was bound to 
generate some attention, especially from the local media.

But when news broke of a thought-provoking report that touched on the 
startling number of murders in the Indo-Canadian community, the press came 
calling in a big way for Delta's new analyst.

Stuffed into the Delta police board room Thursday morning, nearly two dozen 
media organizations questioned Alex Tyakoff, just one month on the job, 
about his report, South Asian-Based Group Crime in British Columbia 
(1993-2003). It's a document that was released publicly seven months 
earlier, but for some reason only caught the attention of the media this week.

While working with the B.C. Organized Crime Agency, Tyakoff was 
commissioned by the Canadian Heritage Department to conduct a focus group 
report on the number of young males in the Indo-Canadian community being 
murdered.

Beginning in 1993 and continuing over a 10-year period, 62 Indo-Canadian 
men were victims of murder in the Lower Mainland. Just this week, two more 
Indo-Canadian men were found murdered at a home in Vancouver.

Many of the suspects are also Indo-Canadian youth, as evidenced by seven 
recent convictions as a result of Delta police investigations.

While Tyakoff's introduction to Delta may have been more eventful than he 
bargained for, he's now focused on the development of the department's 
intelligence-led policing section.

For years, the Delta police has had one officer tasked with gathering 
intelligence. The difference now is Tyakoff, a civilian member, will 
develop and disseminate the intelligence to street level officers all the 
way up to senior management, using the information to deploy police 
resources more efficiently.

"He's kind of like an early warning system for us," noted S/Sgt. John 
Robin, who's in charge of the department's serious crime section.

"It helps us prioritize our responses and to recognize trends earlier, 
whether it be property crimes, drugs or other crimes."

When teacher Gary Sidhu was shot to death on a North Delta street in 2002, 
an intensive Delta police investigation ensued. Thousands of cell phone 
records were gathered.

Tyakoff did an in-depth analysis on the frequency of calls, links to 
people, basically identifying patterns which he was able to articulate to 
the court. "It allows us to focus better on who the targets may be in a 
particular case," Robin said.

Tyakoff started as a community planner. After university, he worked with 
community-based organizations in the Tri-Cities area.

"I was interested in the social planning end of it, " he said from his new 
ground floor office in Delta police headquarters.

 From there he worked for some private developers, then got a job as a 
planner with the District of Mission, ending up as a policy analyst in the 
Ministry of Health's forensic unit.

"We dealt with the mentally ill in conflict with the law," Tyakoff said.

Soon, he found himself working more and more with criminal justice issues.

"I became interested about how a community planner could assist 
them."Eventually, Tyakoff signed on with the now-defunct Coordinated Law 
Enforcement Unit, a region-wide amalgamation of police forces investigating 
organized crime. CLEU, as it was known, was taken over by the B.C. 
Organized Crime Agency. Tyakoff worked there in drug enforcement and 
proceeds of crime before taking the job in Delta.

He's impressed with the caliber of officers in the department, working with 
them in the past on joint police investigations involving organized crime.

"My role will be to gather statistics on things like auto crime or break 
and enters and discern any types of patterns. It's really to free up the 
investigators so they can be on the road," he said.

Delta spent over a year developing the intelligence-led policing model, 
with help from the Edmonton Police Service, which has an active 
intelligence section.

Two longtime Delta police officers will also be part of the new section.

Looking to enhance the department's community policing model, Supt. Rich 
Drinovz said they struck a service delivery committee.

"They went out across North America and examined policing models. They came 
back with an intelligence-led model which we've now adapted to fit Delta," 
he said. "It's a proactive deployment of resources."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom