Pubdate: Sat, 14 Feb 2009
Source: Edmonton Journal (CN AB)
Copyright: 2009 The Edmonton Journal
Contact: http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/edmonton/edmontonjournal/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/134
Author: Richard Foot, Canwest News Service

PUBLIC FEARS GROW AS GANGLAND VIOLENCE ON THE RISE

Growing Appetite For Illegal Drugs Fuels Warfare Among 
Organized-Crime Suppliers

(CNS) Canada's cities are in the grip of a sharp, new cycle of gang 
violence fuelled by the country's growing appetite for illicit drugs 
and competition among the organized-crime groups that supply them, 
say police and other experts.

While organized-crime wars are not new to Canada, a recent wave of 
gangland shootings, from Halifax to Calgary to Vancouver, has 
occurred alarmingly in public places where citizens least expect 
bullets to be flying. The fear and outrage that settled on Toronto in 
2005 when 15-year-old Jane Creba was killed in a shootout in a 
downtown shopping area has arrived in other cities, whose innocent 
citizens are being hit.

"We're going through a very significant cycle, where violence has 
been extremely high," says Sgt. Shinder Kirk, spokesman for British 
Columbia's Integrated Gang Task Force, a multi-agency police group.

"The public nature of this violence, the callous disregard for the 
safety of anyone and everyone who may be in a public spot when the 
shooting occurs, is a great concern to all of us."

Why are so many gang hits taking place in public spaces?

"Public shootings are a matter of convenience," says Robert Gordon, a 
criminologist and gang specialist at Simon Fraser University. "People 
aren't as easy targets as in the past, so gangs will follow someone 
around in public until they can make a hit. They're not concerned 
with collateral damage. All they care about is hitting the target."

"Gangs have become much bolder," says Charles Momy, president of the 
Canadian Police Association. "Some cities look like they're under siege."

Across the country, local politicians and provincial leaders have 
responded by convening news conferences and community meetings where 
citizens have expressed outrage at the shootings and the apparent 
inability of police to control them.

Kash Heed, chief of the West Vancouver Police, recently called 
gangland violence the city's most "pressing social problem" and 
admitted that what police have been doing over the past five years to 
control it "isn't working."

There have been eight gangland shooting incidents in Vancouver and 
its once-bucolic suburbs since New Year's Eve. Four known crime 
figures, all in their 20s, have been killed and others injured.

Three of the Vancouver-area incidents occurred in busy parking lots 
outside suburban malls or grocery stores. The latest episode, in the 
wee hours of Thursday morning, looked like a scene from a Hollywood 
movie, with gang members firing wildly at each other from their 
vehicles while tearing around a Chevron gas station in Langley, B.C.

No bystanders have been hit in Vancouver this year, but one of the 
crime figures killed in February was linked to a gangland massacre in 
2007, when six people, including two bystanders, were shot to death.

WITNESS SHOT DEAD IN CALGARY

In Calgary last month, four people were killed including one 
bystander, in two separate shootings. Keni Su'a, a 43-year-old 
Calgarian, was shot dead while eating a meal on New Year's Day, 
simply for having witnessed the execution of two gang members in the 
same restaurant. Two weeks later another gang member was killed under 
a hail of bullets fired at his Dodge SUV on a Calgary street, the 
city's fifth public gang shooting since 2007.

In Halifax last November, gang members fired multiple shots into a 
suburban pizza shop, and later traded gunfire on the street outside a 
children's hospital in the city's downtown.

Drive-by gang shootouts have also occurred in recent months in 
Winnipeg, Prince George, B.C., and on the Hobbema aboriginal reserve 
in Alberta, where a 23-month-old toddler was hit by a stray bullet.

Montreal is also no stranger to gang warfare. Dozens of 
organized-crime suspects, allegedly connected to the cocaine trade, 
were arrested Thursday in a police sweep across Montreal and Ottawa. 
It also suffered through years of biker gang turf wars.

Michael Chettleburgh, a Toronto-based criminal justice consultant and 
author of the book Young Thugs, Inside the Dangerous World of 
Canadian Street Gangs, says there are no real links between crime 
groups in the West and the East.

Gangs in Western Canada, however, are all part of a continuous supply 
chain in which B.C. marijuana, plus heroin, cocaine and guns from the 
United States, are funnelled through Vancouver and into Alberta's cities.

He says money generated by the economic boom in Alberta over the past 
three years not only increased the demand for drugs but lured gang 
members from Eastern Canada into the province, eager for a piece of the action.

"One thing Canadians don't realize is that demand for drugs of all 
descriptions has roughly doubled, right across the country, in the 
last 10 years," says Chettleburgh.

"So it's the drug-consuming habits of Canadians that is contributing 
to the violence."

He also says the rise of chemical drugs such as ecstasy and crystal 
meth -- manufactured in home labs with recipes off the Internet -- 
are causing some smaller, street-level gangs to leave the umbrella of 
larger, organized-crime groups and branch out on their own.

That friction, plus other competitive rivalries, means "the whole 
industry is in flux right now, and that's why we have the kind of 
violence we're seeing."

Kirk of B.C.'s Integrated Gang Task Force, says the biggest problem 
in solving shootouts in public places is that so little physical 
evidence is left behind, aside from shell casings. When police 
question gang members injured by gunfire, they refuse to speak.

"The piece of the puzzle that's missing are people who have knowledge 
about what occurred, why, and who it was directed at," he says.

Momy says the Conservative government's new law introduced last year, 
with tougher bail provisions and stiffer penalties for gang crimes, 
hasn't produced the desired results.

"The new law isn't working," he says. "We're still seeing too many 
cases where these guys are given bail, they're back on the street, 
and they're offending all over again."

Criminologist Gordon says while prosecutors and judges should do more 
to push cases through an inefficient court system more concerned with 
legal process than with justice, disparate police agencies are also 
not working well together.

POLICE ALWAYS PLAYING CATCH-UP

Gordon also says police across Canada have been playing catch-up with 
organized crime for years. And he worries that once the current cycle 
of violence ramps down, police and prosecutors will lose sight of the 
problem again.

"What I fear is that once the current wave is over, government 
complacency will once again set in."

As for suggestions that Canada needs more social and education 
programs to reduce the root causes of gang violence, such as poverty, 
Gordon says while he agrees with a balanced approach, many of today's 
gangsters, including those responsible for the latest violence in 
Vancouver, come from middle-class families and good educational backgrounds.

Chettleburgh says the current cycle of violence will ramp down, once 
the gang leaders realize their warfare is ultimately bad for their business.

Until then, he says, "Canadians need to keep their fears in check."
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