GUNS AND GANGS TROUBLE POLICE

RCMP Asst. Commissioner Says Regional Police Force Not Needed

Despite the recent high-profile slayings of six people in Surrey,
murder rates are down across the Lower Mainland, a top RCMP officer
said Friday.

And Metro Vancouver does not need a regional police force because of
the effectiveness of integrated units, such as the joint police
homicide squad, Asst. Commissioner Peter German said in an interview.

German said he is troubled by the fact that young gangsters are
trigger-happy, pulling out high-powered weapons in public places to
take revenge on rivals.

"On one hand we see crime-reduction strategies working and the work
of our gang squads and so forth working, but on the other hand, you
have these spikes of violence and you know at the base of it are
drugs and there seems to be persons dealing in drugs (who are) much
more prepared to turn to firearms than they were in the past," German said.

"There is an increased number of guns on the street and that is
obviously a concern from an officer survival perspective and how the
police react to just routine traffic stops and so forth, but it is
also a great concern when one innocent person or two innocent persons
are caught up in violence."

German, who is in charge of the RCMP across the Lower Mainland, said
creating large metropolitan police forces is no more effective in
tackling cross-border crime than Metro Vancouver's system of
individual municipal policing enhanced by integrated units.

"Generally speaking, I think that the police are doing a very good
job on the Lower Mainland in terms of approaching gang violence," he
said. "We are very integrated -- much more so than we were 20 years ago.

"But the beauty about the Lower Mainland is that we've been able to
allow communities to maintain local control over the police issues
that concern them .... The big issue is, you have got somebody to
take care of that cross-jurisdictional crime. And that is why you
have these integrated units."

Squads investigating homicide and gangs, and specialized dog and
identification teams draw from RCMP and municipal forces across the
region, German said.

Even large metropolitan forces must create similar specialized teams
that are not focused on local crime, he said.

While crime generally is being tackled effectively in B.C., it may be
harder to delve into the trend of younger, more violent criminals
contracted to organized crime to carry out targeted hits, such as the
worst multiple gang murder ever in B.C. in a Surrey high-rise Oct. 19.

Four of the victims, shot in the head execution-style, were young
gangsters, but two others were innocent bystanders likely
assassinated to stop them from becoming witnesses.

"As groups become more sophisticated, they rely on others to do their
bidding for them. That seems to be a reality in the gang world. So
often-times, the murderers who hit people tend not to be heads of
particular gangs ... or even officially affiliated," German said.

"In some ways it explains the fact that crime is going down and yet
there is something about the psyche of gangs.

"There is something about the psyche of the people that join gangs
that they result to violence much earlier than they did in the past."