THERE IS NEW HOPE IN GANG-RIDDEN HOBBEMA, As Dozens Of Gangsters Get Out
After The Community Unites Against Them

HOBBEMA -- The graffiti that scarred nearly every building is gone.

And so are a lot of the guns used to inflict so much misery in this
heartbroken community.

These days, an air of cautious optimism hangs over the Samson townsite,
the largest community in the four reserves that make up Hobbema, 87 km
south of Edmonton.

"People are listening," said RCMP spokesman Staff Sgt. Darrel Bruno.
"They're painting over graffiti as soon as it goes up and it's sending a
signal to the gang members."

Bruno said dozens of known gangsters have moved out of the community.

A four-month gun amnesty last year resulted in only seven firearms being
voluntarily surrendered to cops. However, Bruno said people have been
tipping off cops to illegal weapons, leading to the seizure of another 35.

Derelict houses - magnets for drug activity - have been bulldozed, and at
least half a dozen houses where drugs could be bought have been put out of
business, Bruno said.

"We don't want to get ahead of ourselves," said one community member, who,
tellingly, asked that her name not be used. "Things are much better than
they were last summer. I think I first realized how much progress was made
over Christmas and New Year's. It was so peaceful - more peaceful than it
has been in years. But there's still a lot of work to be done. We can't
quit."

Last year, the Samson townsite looked like a war zone, with a profusion of
rotting, derelict houses sheltering crackheads and their dealers. Nearly
every other building was covered in gang tags and other graffiti. Smashed
windows were left unrepaired.

A vicious gang war had erupted over Hobbema's lucrative drug trade. Police
identified 13 criminal organizations with a total of 230 members and
affiliates operating in the community of 12,000. Edmonton's homicide rate,
one of the highest of any major Canadian city, is about three per 100,000
people. Last year, Hobbema's was nearly 30 times higher.

Residents told horror stories of shootouts in the streets, nightly
drive-by attacks and even snipers targeting police.

The community was living in terror, but that soon boiled over into outrage
when 13-month-old Asia Saddleback was hit in the crossfire of a drive-by
shooting. Miraculously, the tot survived, but the incident galvanized the
community into action.

A curfew was declared. Rewards were offered. Citizens, who up to that
point were too terrified to co-operate with police, were calling in tips
on the gangsters and druggies in record numbers.

Yesterday, three members of the Saskatchewan-based Regina Anti-Gang
Services crew came to Samson High School to talk to kids about the horrors
of gang life. They were brought there by the local RCMP and the provincial
solicitor general.

One of them was Catherine, who asked that her last name not be used for
fear of retribution back home.

She quickly climbed the gang ladder and within a couple of years was
running a large chunk of the cocaine and sex trades in the Saskatchewan
capital. She was the first female in Western Canada to be charged under
organized crime laws - at the tender age of 16.

"I thought I had everything I wanted," she told the kids, "power, money,
respect."

She did her time and was out of jail again at 18. But back out on the
streets again, she found out the hard way just how little power and
respect she really had. She was beaten and robbed by a rival gang as her
friends ran away leaving her bloody, lying in the street.

In three months in 2007, four of her friends were stabbed to death. In the
same year, another friend died of a drug overdose.

Now she's 21 and attending university, making something of her life.

Asked by one of the kids where she'd be if she'd stayed in gang life,
Catherine answered bluntly: "Dead, in jail or on drugs."

Also at the meeting were Edmonton Eskimos Patrick Kabongo and Ron "Goldie"
McClendon, who encouraged the kids to follow their dreams.

Bruno hopes the two-pronged attack on gangs -driving the current ones out
of town while working to ensure others don't grow up to replace them -
will work for Hobbema in the long run.

But he's a realist. It will take patience, persistence and commitment by
the entire community.

"People have to know that the gang issue is not going to go away overnight."