IN VANCOUVER, DRUGS + GANGS = MURDER

There Were Only 15 Murders In 2001, Compared To 43 In 1991. One Reason: The
Declining Proportion Of Young Men

As if written from the same noir script, Vancouver's 15th murder victim of
2001 breathed his last on a downtown sidewalk Friday night, his life
bleeding away because of illicit drugs.

Almost all the others died under depressingly similar circumstances or for
sadly analogous reasons -- drugs and their attendant gangland mores.

And last year was a good year: only 15 men died, most in their 20s,
denizens or dilettanti in the city's thriving criminal underworld.

Constable Sarah Bloor of the Vancouver police department said the numbers
are "certainly down," noting there were 18 murders in 2000.

A decade ago, in 1991, she said police chalk-outlined 43 bodies.

Times and crime have changed.

In Canada, fewer than one in five now die at the hands of strangers -- it's
the victim's friends, neighbours and loved ones who usher them into the
afterlife, usually when they're drunk, high or both.

And generally, in Vancouver at least, it's bad guys murdering bad guys.

In the argot of the police blotter, murder these days usually means a
drug-or gang-related killing.

Over the past decade, the homicide rate and the number of slayings has
steadily fallen and the city has become a safer place for regular joes and
other innocents.

There are exceptions, but few: On Nov. 17, the body of 41-year-old Aaron
Webster was found in Stanley Park near an area frequented by homosexuals
seeking anonymous sex. He was naked except for his hiking boots.

And Andrew Moran was stabbed to death the morning of Dec. 9 outside the
24-hour Vineyard Restaurant on West 4th Avenue.

Neil Boyd, the oft-quoted criminologist with Simon Fraser University, says
demographics is the key to understanding the change of the previous 10
years -- young men, the pride-filled, testosterone-charged perpetrators and
victims in most homicides, now make up a much smaller percentage of the
population.

He said that today, about five per cent of the population consists of men
aged 15 to 29 -- who make up about 60 per cent of all murderers.

"Twenty-five years ago, the figure was 10 per cent. So if you have half as
many young men in the population, that has a lot to do with how much crime
and how much violent crime you experience."

There are some other factors, too.

The homicide squad believes better emergency response services have kept
the death toll down: Paramedic and rescue personnel save some who might
otherwise die from their wounds.

Other civic and government initiatives have helped too, Bloor added.

City hall's crackdown on problem bars that overserved and retail outlets
that were a front for pushers has reduced the number of out-of-control
individuals on the street.

"That's common-sense public policy," said Boyd.

"If you can decrease opportunities for crime, you can sometimes decrease
crime. If you shut down bars in which there is a lot of violence, it's not
unreasonable to think you can shut down some of the opportunities for
people to get drunk, get into fights and stab each other to death or beat
each other to death."

The focus in recent years on drug education, treatment services and
anti-spousal abuse laws also have had an effect, police add.

"Public education, the harassment laws, those things have worked," Bloor said.

"We looked at the stats for 33 homicides during the last two years: 11 were
gang-related, nine were drug-related, 10 occurred in the Downtown Eastside
and only one of them was related to domestic violence."

Last year, the new drugs-and-gang profile was even more pronounced.

- - The first murder of the year was Jan. 26, when two young Asian men
entered a room at the 2400 Motel on Kingsway and shot dead Kevin Peters,
21, in a drug deal gone sour.

- - A few days later, on Feb. 4, David Bahamonde, 23, was found incinerated
in a torched car on McGill Street, the victim of underworld payback.

- - John Rogers, 27, was executed by a hitman on April 29 at an Oak Street
gas station putatively over his role in the March 9 shooting of Hells Angel
Donald Roming outside a Yaletown bar.

- - On Aug. 3, in an ambush directly linked to a dispute among Indo-Canadian
drug dealers, Gary Rai was shot and killed in a beauty salon as he had his
head shaved.

- -In another gang hit during the first week of August, Van Hong Hai Dang,
27, of Victoria was shot to death while sitting in a car near Kingsway and
East 19th Avenue.

"It's a generalization, but it holds true, it's young males in their 20s,"
Bloor sighed.

Five officers are investigating the latest murder, and on Monday they were
still trying to contact the 42-year-old victim's next-of-kin and a second
man who was wounded but survived the Friday-night fracas.

After talking to one witness, police remained unsure about what happened in
the darkened park behind the Cenotaph or on West Pender Street afterwards,
but they were searching for two young black men as their prime suspects.

"It's a matter of the investigators getting a hold of the [second] victim
who was released and bring him in for a full interview to determine what
transpired," Bloor said.

"There were two witnesses we wanted to come forward and one has. We're
still waiting for the additional witness to come forward."

The homicide squad won't even guess at the minimum cost of a murder
investigation.

"There's just no way to calculate it," Bloor explained. "On some cases you
have four investigators working, on others you call in eight."

In the still-unsolved Webster case, for instance, she said the four
investigating officers each ran up an additional 100 hours of overtime
within the first week.

Suffice to say, even in the most straightforward of homicide cases --
perhaps when police arrest the perpetrator with the smoking weapon in hand
- -- the cost of collecting and maintaining evidence, of interviewing those
involved, of the autopsy, of the paperwork, of the handling of the accused,
of the court time, of all the other processes, is enormous.

"Sometimes you can solve it within 48 hours," Bloor said, "sometimes it
takes weeks or months."

For instance, only seven charges have so far been laid in connection with
last year's murders.