THIS BIG WAVE OF GANG CRIME IN OUR REGION
HAS REALLY HIT HOME WITH ME

When I moved in, it seemed like a good neighbourhood. The house was
high on the hill in sleepy Port Moody.

I got a rude shock when the electrical system crashed.

The electrician said it looked like someone who'd lived in the house
before me had rigged the wires to power a grow-op -- one whose
products would undoubtedly grease the wheels of the criminal gangs who
run the marijuana business in B.C.

A few months later, my front lawn got chewed up by a truck careening
down the street. It crashed through a house nearby.

When police arrived, they found a house full of pot. Apparently, my
neighbour was in the "drying" business. He took the pot from the
grow-ops and dried it out before it hit the streets -- again courtesy
of B.C.'s organized gangs.

Shortly after, another neighbour brought home his new pit bulls. They
matched nicely with his white Escalade, and I'm sure they made him
feel safe in his million-dollar home with the video-surveillance
system over his front door.

He seemed like a nice guy to me. He helped a bit with building my
fence. His sister and brother-in-law who shared the house were great;
they all came to my neighbourhood Christmas party.

He was also one of the two men in the Mercedes that got shot up at
70th and Granville last week. Police say my ex-neighbour wasn't the
target -- his passenger, a known gang member -- was the one the
killers were after.

A grow-op, a drying op and a neighbour killed in a targeted shooting.
It's made me realize that this wave of gang crime is not far removed
from my daily routine.

Suddenly, I've become acutely concerned about what police are doing
about it. They have pooled some resources to create the Integrated
Gang Task Force. But since it got started, few arrests have been made
related to the major gang-related shootings.

The Vancouver police, keenly aware that public confidence has been
shaken, has created its own special group dedicated to "getting in
gang members' faces."

But one wonders how much good either of these units can
do.

When a man was gunned down outside his Shaughnessy home recently, the
regional gang unit confirmed that it had long known he was a member of
the Big Circle Gang. VPD said they had no idea.

That's a big problem. Drugs that get made in Port Moody may be sold in
Burnaby or Abbotsford. The kingpins who run the trade might have homes
in Vancouver, and the people who kill for them could live in Surrey or
Coquitlam. Their crimes are connected, regardless of municipal borders.

Our police must be, too.

We urgently need a regional police force that can operate as
seamlessly as the criminals do.

Metro Vancouver has become a big place with big-city problems and
big-city criminals. It's time we had a big-city police force to match
them.