GANGS WASHING VIOLENT LAUNDRY IN PUBLIC

From Halifax To Vancouver, More Bystanders Get In The Way Of Mobsters' Bullets

(CNS) - Canada's cities are in the grip of a sharp, new cycle of gang
violence fuelled by the country's growing appetite for illicit drugs
and competition among the organized crime groups that supply them,
say police and other experts. While organized crime wars are not new
to Canada, a wave of gangland shootings, from Halifax to Calgary to
Vancouver, has occurred alarmingly in public places. The outrage that
settled on Toronto in 2005 when 15-year-old Jane Creba was killed in
a downtown shootout has arrived in other cities, whose innocent
citizens are being hit.

"We're going through a very significant cycle, where violence has
been extremely high," says Sgt. Shinder Kirk, spokesman for British
Columbia's Integrated Gang Task Force.

"The public nature of this violence, the callous disregard for the
safety of anyone and everyone who may be in a public spot when the
shooting occurs, is a great concern to all of us."

Why are so many gang hits taking place in public spaces?

"Public shootings are a matter of convenience," says Robert Gordon, a
criminologist and gang specialist at Simon Fraser University. "People
aren't as easy targets as in the past, so gangs will follow someone
around in public until they can make a hit. They're not concerned
with collateral damage. All they care about is hitting the target."

"Gangs have become much bolder," says Charles Momy, president of the
Canadian Police Association. "Some cities look like they're under siege."

Across the country, local politicians and provincial leaders have
responded by convening news conferences and community meetings where
citizens have expressed outrage at the shootings and the apparent
inability of police to control them.

Kash Heed, chief of the West Vancouver Police, recently called
gangland violence the city's most "pressing social problem" and
admitted that what police have been doing over the past five years to
control it "isn't working."

There have been eight gangland shooting incidents in Vancouver and
its suburbs since New Year's Eve. Four known crime figures, all in
their 20s, have been killed and others injured.

No bystanders have been hit in Vancouver this year but one of those
killed in February was linked to a gangland massacre in 2007, when
six people, including two bystanders, were shot to death.

In Calgary last month, four people were killed including one
bystander, in two separate shootings. Keni Su'a, a 43-year-old
Calgarian, was shot dead while eating a meal on New Year's Day,
simply for having witnessed the execution of two gang members in the
same restaurant.

Two weeks later a gang member was killed under a hail of bullets
fired at his SUV. It was Calgary's fifth public gang shooting since 2007.

In Halifax last November, gang members fired multiple shots into a
suburban pizza shop, and later traded gunfire on the street outside a
children's hospital in the city's downtown.

Drive-by gang shootouts have also occurred in recent months in
Winnipeg, Prince George, B.C., and on the Hobbema reserve in Alberta,
where a 23-month-old toddler was hit by a stray bullet.

Montreal is also no stranger to gang warfare. Dozens of organized
crime suspects, allegedly connected to the cocaine trade, were
arrested Thursday across Montreal and Ottawa.

Kirk of B.C.'s Integrated Gang Task Force, says the biggest problem
in solving shootouts in public places is that so little physical
evidence is left behind. When police question gang members injured by
gunfire, they refuse to speak.

Momy says the new federal law, with tougher bail provisions and
stiffer penalties for gang crimes, hasn't produced the desired results.

Gordon worries that once the current cycle of violence ramps down,
police and prosecutors will lose sight of the problem again.

"What I fear is that once the current wave is over, government
complacency will once again set in," Gordon said.