DRUG TRADE FUELLING GANG GUNPLAY

'Gangland-Style' Shootings Becoming Common in Public As Rivals Battle
With More Sophisticated Weapons, Experts Say

Less than 48 hours after Toronto Mayor David Miller launched a
national push to have handguns banned by the federal government, the
city recorded three more shootings.

Elsewhere this past week, Calgary police were appealing for tips
following two shootings that injured two young men.

Neither shooting was a random act, said Calgary police, who summed up
the gunplay as just the latest example of the "blatant disregard gang
members have for innocent members of the community who could have been
hit by errant bullets."

Michael Chettleburgh, author of Young Thugs: Inside the Dangerous
World of Canadian
Street Gangs, warns of a rise in the number of young people joining
gangs and says the
increasing gunplay on Canadian streets is a symptom of a burgeoning drug trade.

"Where there are guns and gangs there are drugs," Chettleburgh says.
"A lot of the violence you see right now across the country, and it is
different in different cities, is driven by gang rivalry associated
with protection of markets."

Chettleburgh researched and wrote the 2002 Canadian Police Survey on
Youth Gangs for the federal government and will release the results of
a new survey this year.

In Winnipeg last month, a 15-year-old street gang member was one of
three charged in a triple murder after masked shooters opened fire at
a house party.

The shootings, a police source told the Winnipeg Free Press, were a
result of increasing hostilities between the Central -- a
youth-oriented street gang -- and Indian Posse gangs.

Edmonton has logged a series of gang-related shootings since January,
including several incidents in which shots were fired into houses. And
Vancouver has seen 14 gang-related homicides since January, according
to police.

Last year, several highly public "gangland-style" shootings at
restaurants, along with the deaths of two innocent bystanders during a
targeted drug-

related hit at a Surrey apartment, spurred police to create a
multi-jurisdictional gang unit.

Only six months old, the Uniform Gang Task Force -- made up of 60
officers from Vancouver and surrounding municipalities along with the
RCMP -- is in the process of becoming permanent, says Vancouver police
Insp. Dean Robinson. The head of the integrated unit says police have
laid "loads of charges" and seized three submachine guns among other
weapons as the high-profile squad tries to move gang violence out of
the "public domain."

While there has no doubt been an increase in the prevalence of guns,
it is the type of firearms and their use "at the drop of a hat" that
worries Robinson most. "We've gone from seeing fairly unsophisticated
revolvers to semi-automatic pistols to hunting rifles sawed off, to
machine guns and military-grade assault rifles," he says.

In Calgary, Staff Sgt. Martin Schiavetta of the Organized Crime
Operations Centre says it is not uncommon for police to find gang
members wearing body armour.

In 2006, 8,100 people across the country were victims of violent gun
crimes including robbery, assault and homicide, according to
Statistics Canada.

Although the number of violent gun crimes in Canada has not risen in
recent years, the number of young people using guns in violent crimes
has risen in three of the previous four years.

That rate has gone up 32 per cent since 2002, according to Statistics
Canada.

Chettleburgh estimates there are between 11,000 and 14,000 gang
members under the age of 21 across the country, up from 7,000 in the
2002 Police Survey on Youth Gangs.

In Toronto, Miller acknowledges a Canada-wide handgun ban isn't a
panacea, but says it is "the next step" in helping to reduce the
number of victims of violent gun crimes. Miller plans to deliver the
petition to Parliament Hill in June.