VIOLENCE WILL ESCALATE: EXPERTS

Crime Fueled By Soaring Price Of Cocaine

The explosion of violence -- fueled by the soaring price of cocaine --
that rocked Metro Vancouver this week will likely escalate, gang
experts predict.

"You usually get a half-dozen events of this kind," said Robert
Gordon, director of Simon Fraser University's criminology centre.

Sgt. Shinder Kirk of the Integrated Gang Task Force said the violence
tends to erupt in waves.

"We know the violence occurs in cycles," said Kirk. "We also know that
this violence can occur at any time."

Three people -- all known to police -- were shot dead early this week
in Surrey and Coquitlam. Police said the three shootings -- of Raphael
Baldini, 21, and a 21-year-old Port Coquitlam woman on Tuesday and
James Ward Erickson, 25, on Monday -- aren't related.

There have been a further five incidents involving deaths and
shootings since last January.

Experts agree the violence is pushed by the drug trade, but they
speculate it doesn't necessarily involve organized criminals, such as
biker and Asian gangs. Instead, they say, smaller upstarts with loose
and scattered networks are behind the shootings.

"Basically, you have small units of thugs who give themselves a
moniker and try to make money off drugs," said a Lower Mainland police
anti-gang-squad officer.

"They do business and have links in Edmonton and Calgary. They are
small, have a variety of connections and are difficult to infiltrate.
Some come together for one criminal transaction," said the source who
did not want his name revealed. "It's disorganized crime."

He said these groups are trigger-happy and volatile and their
resentments can usually be traced back to a ripoff or unpaid debts.
"These guys don't hold grudges for long," he said. "They don't have
the patience and retaliate fast."

He said the soaring price of cocaine -- $50,000 a kilogram in
Vancouver, more than double last year's $22,000 -- is behind the violence.

Kirk noted that in B.C. there are organized crime groups at the top
and street-level criminals at the bottom, with mid-level groups that
haven't been around long in between. Those groups will co-operate
vertically with the other two levels and even with each other, he said.

"But disputes can develop as quickly as the alliances," he said.
"They're allies one minute, then enemies the next."

Meanwhile, Gordon said, the cops' approach to the gangs has been
inadequate because of fragmented police forces.

And he said the B.C. government and the solicitor-general's office is
at fault for not taking the problem seriously by developing a
province-wide policy to deal with it. The police and policy response
"is less organized than organized crime," he said.