GANGLAND HIT RENEWS CALL FOR ACTION

Mayor Questions Whether Regional Police Force Would Help Solve The
Problems

Calls for a regional police force have gotten a little louder as
several police agencies in Metro Vancouver grapple with rising levels
of gang-related homicides and shootings throughout the region.

Lower Mainland police forces announced Nov. 1 that a new violence
suppression team would be targeting gang activity, a day after the
Vancouver Police Department announced it would create a task force to
address the escalating violence.

But as the violence dots a Lower Mainland map, West Vancouver police
Chief Const. Kash Heed and others are coming forward to suggest that
the area should consider discussing amalgamation of services.

"There needs to be, I think, a greater integration with other gang
units and crime units in the Lower Mainland," the NDP's public safety
critic Mike Farnworth, MLA for Port Coquitlam-Burke Mountain, said.

But Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan says the answer lies
deeper.

"It's another of those suggestions that says there's a simple solution
to a very complex problem," he said.

Drugs and weapons, along with immigrants who commit crimes when they
come to Canada but aren't deported, are among the other factors that
need to be considered, the mayor added.

"There is no easy or simple solution to this, and a regional police
force is not going to solve gangs."

The city would not refuse to participate out of hand in an initiative
that involves working with others, the mayor said, pointing out that
local police have not been an island in the past.

"Obviously Burnaby's always been cooperative with anything we think
will make our community safer," Corrigan said, noting the local
detachment works with RCMP in other regional communities and with
municipal forces on different teams.

"That being said, nothing has shown us that a regional police force
will do a better job of policing. If a regional police force succeeded
in stopping gangs, then Toronto wouldn't have any gangs."

Corrigan says the solution lies farther up the political ladder, with
the provincial and federal governments providing more resources and
dealing with non-crime problems that take up local policing resources.

Burnaby's police officers, he said, are on the street, reacting to
immediate problems in the community and often dealing with people who
are homeless or mentally ill, or both.

"Our police officers are very often directed from dealing with the big
crime to dealing with the day-to-day crime that's on our street."

Const. Tim Fanning of the Vancouver Police Department said last week
that information is passed through all municipal departments and RCMP
detachments.

"All the Lower Mainland police agencies readily and fervently share
information," he said. "We have an integrated approach to policing,
and we have an integrated gang task force, we work with IHIT (the
integrated homicide investigation team)."

In the middle of the back-and-forth talk of amalgamation and
regionalization of services, is Sgt. Shinder Kirk.

Kirk is the spokesperson for the B.C. Integrated Gang Task Force,
which does behind-the-scenes work on the gang underworld within the
province.

Regionalizing police services won't solve anything, he said, because
on many levels policing has already integrated a variety of
departments and specialties - like homicide, emergency response and,
of course, gangs - from both municipal and RCMP headquarters.

"The integrated model has been very effective and, from my personal
experience, it's been very effective.

"Those sorts of barriers that used to exist between jurisdictions are
no longer there," he said.

Some have asked Kirk why his integrated department hasn't taken a lead
on events transpiring in the past couple weeks, but he maintains that
integration involves more than just action.

"The gang task force's role is not to go in and assume control of the
investigation," Kirk explained, "but to provide specialized resources
to assist in the investigation.

"We were created to deal with the worst of the worst and to provide
specialized resources to the gang-related issues."

Part of offering "specialized resources" to various police agencies
includes knowing just what they're facing with respect to B.C.'s
criminal underbelly.

"In the Lower Mainland, we're faced with a growth of gang-related
issues over the past 10 to 15 years," he said.

"All of it is fuelled, at some point, by the drug trade."

The "prolific marijuana industry," Kirk explained, is often just the
beginning, as it leads into harsher drugs - all of which is directly
correlated to the amount and use of firearms.

A total of 129 gangs are operating in the province at any given
moment, a number that has increased as more police officers gather
intelligence on those involved.

Instead of stumbling upon gangs, Kirk said, better investigative
techniques have helped police identify emerging gangs in their
development phase.

After years of intelligence gathering and study, Kirk said police can
now classify gangs into three different categories: street-level
gangs, mid-level gangs and organized crime groups.

Street gangs consist of younger members, generally meeting each other
at the middle or secondary school levels, within close proximity to
each other.

They're involved in lower levels of criminal behaviour, have less
hierarchy and are fluid in their makeup, meaning people may come and
go or the group may disband and carry on in another form.

At the top of the gang spectrum are traditional organized crime gangs,
the ones that typically get the most attention from Hollywood.

"This is our Asian organized crime, Eastern European mafia, Russian or
otherwise, outlaw motorcycle groups," Kirk said.

In this group there is significant structure and hierarchy, with codes
of conduct, rules and/or bylaws that organization members must adhere
to.

In organized crime there is a distinct boss, who may also delegate
responsibilities:

"Soldiers, captains and lieutenants, if you were going to pattern it
after the traditional Sicilian mafia," Kirk said.

They're extremely sophisticated groups in not only hierarchy but in
the types of criminal activity and how they go about conducting those
crimes.

But what fascinates Kirk, and may be behind the violence from the last
month, are the mid-level gangs, which are much more difficult to pin
down.

Some have a hierarchy, some don't; some may have a 'brand' or name,
with others being anonymous; some may have a core group of one
ethnicity while most are multi-ethnic.

These are the ones that have franchised out to other regions of the
province, with no direct link to the main gang in the Lower Mainland,
just someone who trades on the gang name, affording them the power of
intimidation and criminal contacts to ensure success.

"Another characteristic is that they're friends one minute, enemies
the next," Kirk said, "even within the groups themselves."

The three levels of gangs do interact with one another, forming
alliances that can sour over time.

"They also may on occasion form alliances horizontally with other
crime groups in that level and be making friends one minute and
enemies the next," he said. "They are extremely violent."

Just like its membership, the weapons of choice for gangs have changed
over time.

"When I first began my career and firearms became commonplace in the
criminal world, it was a sawed-off rifle or sawed-off shotgun," Kirk
said. "Now what we're seeing are semi-automatic pistols,
semi-automatic assault rifles or even automatic weapons. We are seeing
a proliferation of very exotic firearms within the criminal
underworld, beginning with the semi-automatic pistol."

While the profile of B.C. gangs is better defined than two decades
ago, Kirk said it is still incredibly difficult for investigators to
build a case against gang members.

"What's interesting is that, very often with these types of cases,
investigators have identified the people responsible," he said.

"Unfortunately, we can't prove it."

Kirk pointed to cases such as that of Laurie Tinga, the Port Moody
woman who was shot while watching TV in her house in 2005.
Investigators haven't laid charges in that case but have suspects in
mind. "We're looking at how we develop a case beyond a reasonable
doubt when, in fact, there's very little physical evidence and no
one's talking," he said.

"These cases never go away. They've never been shelved or simply put
in a box and put away. There always is some activity, regardless of
the scale of the case, there's always some activity, there's always
someone with their ear to the ground."

In the interim, Kirk said it's imperative that the province start
looking at prevention, which must start at a much earlier age given
the external influences kids face.

"Look at the pop culture that exists: We have mass media, the
commercialization and glamourization of the 'gangsta' lifestyle by
movies, music," he said.

"We also have a culture where we are telling, through advertising,
that people must have these material things in order to be considered
a success.

"How do you gain those material things? One could work for a living
and build up over time, or one can engage in criminal activity and get
those things much sooner in life."