THE GANG FIX

North Shore mayors are pouring cold water on the idea of police
amalgamation as a response to unprecedented gang violence that has
left the region blood-spattered in the past month, while offering
cautious support for justice system remedies advocated by a group of
seven mayors last week.

Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts, who organized the policy caucus with
mostly Fraser Valley officials and did not invite North Shore mayors,
said her group will press for a crackdown on gang violence through
legislative reform - including mandatory firearms offence sentencing
- - and not by regionalizing area police forces.

The meeting followed a near daily assault of targeted gangland hits
with 18 shootings or killings in a month.

In an interview Friday, City of North Vancouver Mayor Darrell
Mussatto said "from what I've seen (the Watts group resolutions) are
supportable," however he stopped short of advocating mandatory
firearms offence sentences.

"We have to work within the charter (of rights)," he said.

West Vancouver Mayor Pamela Goldsmith-Jones said legal remedies
suggested are "part of the solution," but asked whether "amoral"
gangsters will be influenced by legal reforms and whether the region
can afford the additional prison capacity needed to accommodate such changes.

District of North Vancouver Mayor Richard Walton said the fact none
of last month's killings happened on the North Shore gives him "no
reassurance."

"We have had a few (targeted shooting) incidents," Walton said,
pointing to the 2008 Delbrook recCentre execution of a known drug dealer.

"There needs to be consistency in judgements," Walton said. "If you
are caught there (must be) a mandatory consequence."

The Delbrook slaying was referenced with fresh detail in a new report
on gangs and guns prepared for the office of B.C.'s solicitor-general.

The report attributes "escalating" gun violence to a struggle for
control of B.C.'s lucrative drug trade, among 129 organized crime
groups including the Bacon Brothers, UN, Red Scorpions and Jamaican
Posse, which are "willing to resort to indiscriminate discharge of
firearms in public places."

The report says 45 shots were fired in the ambush execution of
Burnaby man Chi Wai Liao, 32, who likely returned fire when he was
shot through the window of his pick-up truck while sitting in the
parking lot outside Delbrook recCentre following a floor-hockey game
in February 2008.

In interviews the North Shore mayors said they have read parts of the
completed North Shore police services review, commissioned in 2008 at
a shared cost of $75,000, to explore the pros and cons of force
amalgamation or status quo policing on the North Shore, in advance of
a RCMP contract renewal decision which must be made by fall 2010 to
prepare for a 2012 deadline.

Walton said the report would likely come to council within weeks.

Goldsmith-Jones said the review identifies gaps in North Shore
policing and ways of improving communication and cost efficiency,
along with the possibility of sharing a jail between the two police
forces and installing video surveillance units in public places.

Like the Watts group, the North Shore mayors appear convinced a
regional force is not the answer to combat gang violence, and are
reluctant to change from the current policing configuration.

"I think we can achieve (improved policing) on the North Shore (and)
I don't think we'll need to amalgamate to do that," Goldsmith-Jones said.

"Whether a regional or provincial force would do any better? I'm not
in a position to judge that."

Mussatto said to get a Metro Vancouver regional force off the ground
will take three years.

"It's not in the cards; you'd give the criminals a three-year head start."

Walton said crime rates have been falling in North Vancouver over the
past 10 years and he would need to be convinced there is a better
policing model that is affordable in order to advocate change.

DNV Coun. Doug MacKay-Dunn, a retired veteran of the Vancouver Police
Department who led covert investigations on organized crime, says he
knows the solution to the gang problem - and it's not regional forces.

"We will take our eye off the ball with this regional policing
(debate)," MacKay-Dunn said. "It's balderdash; it's all flash and no bang."

He said there is "no evidence the Metro Toronto regional force" is
more successful in fighting gangs than the Lower Mainland's
collection of forces and integrated units.

MacKay-Dunn said the province's criminal sentencing is extremely weak
in comparison to the rest of Canada and justice branch reforms are
key in his unified plan for fighting gangs including bolstered asset
seizure legislation, reverse-onus court processes, mandatory
sentences, and elimination of Crown counsel's "prosecutorial discretion."

The last point is the most provocative since MacKay-Dunn claims
changes made by the BC NDP allowing "prosecutorial discretion" have
left the Crown "open to undue influence" from organized crime.

MacKay-Dunn said in his day police believed the Hells Angels were
exerting "undue influence" on Crown counsel, who had the power to
plea bargain or reject charges, unlike "the old days when police took
charges straight to the Justice of the Peace."

"It was never proved," MacKay-Dunn said. "(But) the door is open to
undue influence."

Asked if by "undue influence" he is suggesting exchanges of money
between gangsters and the justice branch MacKay-Dunn would not
elaborate. He reiterated he believes the Angels are now responsible
for supplying guns to "junior level" gangs involved in the recent
bloodbath, and that the Angels have infiltrated B.C. society at the
highest levels and exert "undue influence" on officials.

He adds Crown counsel don't have adequate staff and therefore are
under pressure to plea bargain or drop charges if convictions seem difficult.

"Expediency is dangerous," he said.

MacKay-Dunn says beating gangs is all about following the money;
existing asset seizure laws should be tied to sentencing with
legislative support from all levels of government.

"You take away (gangsters') money so they can't play or pay for
lawyers," MacKay-Dunn said. He added with reverse onus laws criminals
would be forced to "prove you're not a gangster and these cars and
houses are not proceeds from crime."

In turn seized capital must be turned around and invested into "the
communities gangsters terrorize" to pay for drug rehabilitation and
prevention education, MacKay-Dunn says.

Walton noted that in a meeting last week with Federal Public Safety
Minister Peter Van Loan - in Vancouver to figure out problems in the
area he deemed the gang capital of Canada - Van Loan pointed to
prosecutorial discretion as a unique system in British Columbia that
produces less charges than other areas of the country. "I'm not sure
how or why we evolved," Walton said.

In an interview Criminal Justice Branch spokesman Neil MacKenzie said
prosecutorial discretion changes go back to the Crown Counsel Act of
1991, but the practice existed in some areas of the province in the mid-80s.

MacKenzie strongly rejected MacKay-Dunn's "undue influence" claim.

"To suggest any crime organization is affecting the decisions Crown
counsel makes is absolutely unfounded."

He said prosecutorial discretion involves a "two-pronged" test. The
Crown must be satisfied that prosecution is in the interest of the
public and there's a "substantial likelihood" of conviction.

He said he can not comment whether the Crown needs more staff to
reduce plea bargaining and dropped charges.

"Our charge approval standard is not influenced by resources."

Contrary to most politicians in the region except for Vancouver Mayor
Gregor Robertson, SFU criminologist Rob Gordon, a former police
officer, says regional policing is indeed the answer to gang problems.

He differs with MacKay-Dunn, saying Metro Toronto and Montreal
amalgamated forces certainly have a better approach to combatting gangs.

"Quebec has been particularly successful with (fighting) the bikers (gangs.)"

Mayors are the main reason police regionalism never gets off the
ground along with the RCMP, Gordon says. Gordon claims the RCMP sides
with powerful mayors such as Watts to block regionalism. He adds
Robertson was likely not at the Watts group meeting because of his
pro-regional force stance.

Gordon said Mussatto's point that it would take three years to get an
amalgamated regional force in place is true, give or take a year, but
he claimed that argument is confusing the issue.

"(Mayors) rely on suppressing violence (when clusters of
gang-killings occur) and then they walk away from (the issue),"
Gordon said. "They need to think long-term."

Gordon said whenever he talks to high-level provincial officials they
admit the current policing system is inadequate but say the forces
opposing change are too great.

"The province will not step up to the plate and override the mayors,"
Gordon said.

Gordon has a three-point plan for overhauling policing to combat
gangs. First, municipalities should halt current negotiations with
the RCMP for 2012 contract renewal in order to avoid time pressure
that stands in the way of needed change.

Next, the solicitor-general should call an independent review of
police services in the province.

Third, the province should immediately create an organized crime
agency. Gordon said there was such an agency in the 1970s, CLEU, that
was highly effective but he believes government dropped it because of
high cost, and replaced it with the The Organized Crime Agency of
British Columbia (OCABC) which was "not effective" and was dropped
several years ago.

"We're certainly reaping the (harm) of (having no provincial
organized crime agency) now," Gordon said.

Gordon said a successful organized crime unit must be a single body
with a clear leader, a good budget and accountability. He says as
much as existing integrated forces are touted by most regional mayors
as an adequate counter to gangland crime, the units "face great
difficulties" and suffer from lack of focus, communication and
participation from all forces.

MacKay-Dunn corroborated that CLEU was "very effective" and a new
agency modelled on it should be re-instated.

"No cost is too high with organized crime," he said.

"It's destroying us."