GANG VIOLENCE IS A STORY THAT WON'T GO AWAY

For the past week we've been leading most of our newscasts on the
gang inferno in the Lower Mainland. We topped many shows with the
same subject the week before.

We didn't want to. We, like many of our viewers, have short attention
spans. We tire of the same old story night after night and look for
new, fresh subjects. But this story, sickeningly, seems to have no
end. And it's dominating the attention of just about everyone.

On the day of the provincial budget, police released the identity of
a woman who had been shot in her car while her four-year-old child
was in the back seat. Then a man was shot and killed in the middle of
the afternoon in south Vancouver. So the budget moved to the second
segment of the show.

On the day President Barack Obama came to Canada, police foiled a
kidnapping by gangs and mayors in Metro Vancouver declared war on
gang violence, so the president moved down the 6 p.m. show (we'd
already done a slew of stories on the brief visit on Global National,
so it wasn't that tough a call).

Some have blamed the media for fuelling the story, for almost
glorifying the violence, which is ludicrous. This is what everyone is
talking about. It's a story we're not making up.

And, for a while, we probably didn't pay it the continuing attention
it deserves. It used to be that we in the media largely ignored bad
guys shooting bad guys. One less bad guy, we figured. But there have
been too many innocent victims, too much daytime violence, and the
outrage -- justifiably -- has grown.

We have reported on the drive-by shootings and mass slayings in
restaurants and apartment blocks, so it was only a matter of time
before it all blew up into an inferno, with almost daily shootings
and reprisals.

We're all mad at the gangs. But we're also growing increasingly
impatient with legislators and a justice system that allows them to
drive around our communities in their black SUVs with darkened
windows, with pistols in the glove compartment and machine-guns under
the passenger seat.

The mayors demanded legislative changes from Ottawa. They want
tougher bail laws, so that anyone caught with a handgun goes to jail,
without any chance of bail. Excellent.

I'd also lock up, for a minimum of 10 years, anyone for using a gun
in any way in the execution of a crime. Even brandishing one would
mean you would go straight to long-term incarceration upon
conviction. No second chances.

The mayors said, rightly, that the law is toothless when it comes to
gangs. The gang members play the system. They're fearless.

Well, let's scare the hell out of them. Let's render them impotent.

In Victoria, Canada's police chiefs meeting this week said they need
improved monitoring devices and legislation to allow them to better
listen in on gang communications. Give it to them, with the
understanding the cops can't use better surveillance techniques to
listen in on the good guys. Get the gangs, but don't give us a
mini-police state.

We've had criminologists this past week telling us that the gang
problem in the Lower Mainland is -- per capita -- the worst on the
planet. There are scores of gangs, all vying for a piece of the
action of the drug trade.

Suddenly, almost unbelievably, the picture-perfect Lower Mainland
feels like Chicago of the 1930s. Lotus Land has become Gangland.

When the young woman was killed this week, it woke us all up to the
fact that this isn't just marginalized, irrelevant violence. It
crossed a line. There used to be a Godfather-like code that the
families, the wives, the mothers and kids of the gangs were untouchable.

Yet unless this was a case of mistaken identity, it means gangland
violence has entered a new, frightening stage. Suddenly, everyone is
looking over their shoulders, or at that black SUV outside the grocery store.

The local politicians are beginning to sound very worried, like many
of their local residents. The provincial and federal politicians now
need to respond, by not just sounding tough, but getting tough.

Civil rights are critically important. But the gangsters -- and what
a strange word that is, used on the west coast of Canada in 2009 --
are laughing at the system. We need to show them that they can't
scare the heck out of our communities. That their actions will be
dealt with harshly and rapidly.

We in the media need to keep on the story and keep everyone's feet to
the fire. Including those parents who might now be wondering why
their unemployed kids are driving new, shiny cars instead of beaters.

Ian Haysom is news director of Global News in British Columbia. He
divides his week between Central Saanich and Vancouver.