Pubdate: Wed, 08 Apr 2009
Source: Langley Times (CN BC)
Copyright: 2009 Langley Times
Contact:  http://www.langleytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1230
Author: Monique Tamminga

POLICE TOIL TO CONTAIN GANGS: ARMSTRONG

As Langley RCMP Supt. Janice Amstrong was about to give City council 
an update on policing issues, she was called away to be briefed about 
a man found bound and bleeding inside his vehicle at 200 Street and 
53 Avenue on Monday evening.

The Surrey man had been beaten badly in the head, likely over drug or 
debt collection, said Armstrong.

He was not co-operating with police so they have very little to go 
on. Witnesses saw him driving erratically south on 200 Street, before 
he pulled over. The victim is well known to police.

The assaults, shootings and murders taking place in Metro Vancouver 
have hit an unprecedented and disturbing level, and even though some 
major players are now behind bars, sadly their arrests are only a 
drop in the bucket, said Armstrong.

"We are very pleased with the charges but there are many other 
players out there," she said. On the weekend, police announced that 
James Kyle Bacon is charged for the first-degree murder of Cory Lal, 
in connection with the Surrey Six massacre that took the lives of two 
innocent men, Chris Mohan and Ed Schellenberg.

In total, three men associated with the Bacons were arrested and 
charged with the murders.

Amstrong said she has re-allocated several officers to work on gang 
issues, 'to keep a lid on it,' she explained.

"We have to, because if Surrey and Abbotsford are squeezing them out, 
and we don't keep up with it, they will end up here," she said.

But they are already living in Langley, she said.

"We have a lot of bars here and higher-end restaurants and gyms in 
the 200 Street corridor that they are known to go to," she said.

A video on the RCMP website shows the Integrated Gang Task Force 
officers walking into the Shark Club and the Vanilla Room, looking 
for gang members. Langley's newly-formed Bar Watch, a self-regulated 
group, is expected to meet with the Integrated Gang Task Force today 
(Wednesday).

"Our analyst is always creating maps of where the known gangsters 
live, where they frequent," she said. Some gang members live in the 
200 Street corridor, she said.

"We are doing everything we can to make sure they are not welcome 
here," she said. Uniformed officers from the gang task force spend a 
lot of time at Langley's nightclubs and are ejecting known gang 
members, she said.

Police are in constant contact with both uniformed and 
behind-the-scenes officers working on the gang task force.

Langley police are focusing in on street level drug activity, she 
said. Some of the most recent murders are drug-related.

IHIT investigators are receiving good leads in the shooting death of 
Laura Lynne Lamoureux, whose body was found in the City on March 14. 
Lamoureux, 36, was a well-known street-level drug dealer with many 
serious criminal charges against her, including assaulting a police 
officer, uttering threats and gun offences. Langley RCMP's core team 
officers are assisting police in Lamoureux's case because of their 
experience working on City streets, where she was known.

Her body was found on 50 Avenue near 202 Street - about seven blocks 
east of where Marc Bontkes was found shot to death in Hi Knoll park 
five days later.

The death of Kyle Barber in his Aldergrove home on March 28 is also 
believed to be drug-related.

There has been four targeted murders in less than two months of 2009. 
In comparison, Langley only recorded two murders last year, one 
unsolved, involving of a man whose body was dumped on the Katzie reserve.

The other was the road-rage death of Silas O'Brien.

The eruption of violence and open-air targeted murders in Metro 
Vancouver is due to rival gangs fighting over drug territory and 
retaliating against each other violently, among other issues, she said.

While cocaine prices are way up, she doesn't think this current gang 
violence is "specifically driven by cocaine prices."

"It's about greed, money, members switching from gang to gang, about 
territory," she said.

It's also about the inability to pay back drug debts, Armstrong 
explained. If someone is trafficking drugs they have to provide money 
back to the kingpin. When that money isn't paid, that drug dealer has 
to pay a tax or face violence and death.

Outreach workers who work with street people, along with Salvation 
Army, have noticed the amount of drug availability has grown in the 
City in the past six months and so has the violence.

Armstrong said police are challenged with an anxious public who want 
crimes to be solved immediately. This contrasts with some victims and 
victims' families unwilling to co-operate with the police.

"Sometimes we even have witnesses not willing to tell us anything," she said.

Police are then faced with lengthy undercover operations and seeking 
access for wire taps.

"If someone has information for us you can report it to us 
anonymously either through Crimestoppers or by getting in touch with 
us anonymously. It's all good information we could use," she said. 
"We can't be apathetic. We all have to do our part."

Meanwhile, Armstrong, along with both Langley mayors, are part of a 
large group that will be lobbying for justice reform in regards to 
letting police get wire taps of cellphones and seeing tougher 
sentences for gang crimes. (See story in Friday's paper.)
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom