FRONT LINES OF JUSTICE

Police and Prosecutors Face a Costly Gamble in the Complex Battle Against
Crime Figures

Weight of evidence: The Crown must disclose all information to the defence.
One recent case had 281,000 intercepted calls in five languages.

Away from the gritty streets and under the glare of courtroom lights, the
prosecution of organized crime figures is an expensive, drawn-out affair
that is increasingly complicated.

And those the police most want to see jailed -- the crime bosses who have
the most power and influence -- are the ones who have best protected
themselves from being charged directly with any crime.

"The more organized and sophisticated the organized crime is, the more
difficult it is for police to get evidence," said Don Beardall, the
anti-organized crime co-ordinator for the federal prosecution services.

"The higher up in the chain, the more insulated the leaders are making
themselves, so they can be very complicated to investigate and prosecute,"
Beardall said in an interview from Ottawa.

Add to that the financial pressures and a public demand for action, and
it's a pressure-filled world on the front lines.

"There are never enough resources to do everything you'd like to do, but
everyone has to deal with the resources they've got," said Beardall.

"Having said that, we've had a number of very good investigations and
prosecutions."

Prosecuting organized crime takes on many faces.

Prosecutions are done by both federal and provincial Crown lawyers,
depending on the alleged crime.

Federal prosecutors deal with most of the cases, because they deal with
drug charges, which Beardall termed the "bread and butter" of organized
crime. Those people are charged under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Provincial prosecutors deal with Criminal Code charges, everything from
impaired driving to assaults to kidnapping. Either federal or provincial
Crown prosecutors can deal with charges laid under relatively new
anti-organized crime legislation, which expands who and what can be charged
when it comes to organized crime.

It's now a crime to participate in the activities of a criminal
organization to help it commit criminal offences. It's also a crime to
commit an offence on behalf of a criminal organization, or to direct the
commission of a criminal offence on behalf of a criminal organization. The
legislation is designed to snare everyone from the people recruiting for
gangs to the people who order killings.

The revamped section of the Criminal Code became law in 2001 and has been
used several times in other provinces, mostly in Ontario and Quebec, with
varying results.

As with any new legislation, it is being challenged in Canadian courts,
with lawyers testing the constitutionality of laws that make it a crime to
participate in or contribute to the activities of organized crime.

B.C.'s first case under the legislation is set to go to trial in B.C.
Supreme Court in 2005.

Beardall warns that the legislation is just a tool, not the
one-size-fits-all answer to a diverse problem.

"They are a means to an end, and not the end in itself," he said.

Police investigations and prosecutions are becoming increasingly
sophisticated, Beardall said. That means they take more time and money and
face more legal challenges when they get to court.

"The evidence can be voluminous and can take a long time, particularly
against those alleged to be at the top. That can create very large
prosecutions that are difficult to manage and can consume a lot of resources."

The Crown must disclose all information to the defence. In some cases, that
means hundreds of thousands of pages of information and thousands of hours
of transcribed taped conversations, all of which both Crown and defence go
through. One recent case had 281,000 intercepted calls in five languages.

In addition, all the complex and diverse evidence has to be presented in a
way that makes sense to the judge or jury.

Drug investigations often gather evidence through wiretap or search
warrants, both of which are highly technical areas of law that tend to
attract a lot of challenges from defence lawyers.

"These techniques lend themselves to a lot of scrutiny," Beardall said.
"Because the techniques used often raise many complex legal issues, you've
got to fight your way through what can sometimes seem like an endless
series of motions leading up to the trial."

But defence lawyer Ken Westlake, who has been defending people for 32
years, including "quite a number" of Hells Angels, said the Crown has far
more resources than an accused person who is facing the power of the state.

Westlake said the police have embarked on a "public relations campaign" to
paint Hells Angels as organized crime members, making it far more difficult
for any of their members to receive a fair trial.

'The major difficulty is overcoming prejudice," said Westlake, who said a
Hells Angels member is often "tarred and feathered" before the trial even
begins.

"There's a "get-'em-at-all-costs" mentality about how the police
investigate," Westlake said. "The Crown is under tremendous pressure to get
convictions."

Westlake said that Hells Angels members are often charged with unwarranted
criminal offences. If they're on the losing end of a bar fight, he said, it
will be the Hells Angel who is charged, not the other person.

Mark Levitz, the sole full-time organized crime prosecutor with the
provincial Crown, said charges are only laid if they meet the Crown
approval standard: There must be a substantial likelihood of conviction,
and the charge must be in the public interest.

"Those tests apply to everyone," said Levitz. "All charges must meet those
standards, whether it's a person in an organized crime group or anyone else."

Levitz deals with charges under the Criminal Code that have a gang or
organized crime aspect to them. He won't talk about individual cases, or
whether he takes any safety precautions as a result of dealing with
organized crime on a daily basis.

"Whatever case we do, with organized crime or any case, we proceed firmly,
fairly and fearlessly," Levitz said.

Prosecuting cases with an organized crime element has a few surprising
challenges. For instance, many of the victims in his cases are themselves
people involved with crime.

"Some of the victims may not be law-abiding citizens, so they have
credibility problems in court," Levitz said.

That means corroborating evidence is often needed.

Many of the cases involve violence out of drug transactions.

A lot of cases are those where the organized crime group is acting as
underworld police, punishing perceived drug rip-offs or collecting on
debts, Levitz said.

"What these organized crime groups do is use violence to victimize people,
whether innocent people or fellow criminals. They're continuously breaching
the rule of law, which is something a civilized society should abhor,
whoever the victim is."