TOP COP SAYS WAR ON GANGS KEEPS GOING

As Langley RCMP Supt. Janice Amstrong was about to give City council
an update on policing issues, she was called away to be briefed about
a man found bound and bleeding inside his vehicle at 200 Street and
53 Avenue on Monday evening.

The Surrey man had been beaten badly in the head, likely over drug or
debt collection, said Armstrong. He was not co-operating with police
so they have very little to go on. Witnesses saw him driving
erratically south on 200 Street, before he pulled over. The victim is
well known to police.

The violence, shootings and murders taking place in Metro Vancouver
have hit an unprecedented and disturbing level, and even though some
major players are now behind bars, sadly their arrests are only a
drop in the bucket, said Armstrong.

"We are very pleased with the charges but there are many other
players out there," she said. On the weekend, police announced that
James Kyle Bacon is charged for the first-degree murder of Cory Lal,
in connection with the Surrey Six massacre that took the lives of two
innocent men, Chris Mohan and Ed Schellenberg.

In total, three men associated with the Bacons were arrested and
charged with the murders.

Amstrong said she has re-allocated several officers to work on gang
issues, 'to keep a lid on it,' she explained.

"We have to because if Surrey and Abbotsford are squeezing them out,
and we don't keep up with it, they will end up here," she said.

But they are already living in Langley, she said.

"We have a lot of bars here and higher-end restaurants and gyms in
the 200 Street corridor that they are known to go to," she said.

A video on the RCMP website shows the Integrated Gang Task Force
officers walking into the Shark Club and the Vanilla Room, looking
for gang members. Langley's newly-formed Bar Watch, a self-regulated
group, is expected to meet with the Integrated Gang Task Force today.

"Our analyst is always creating maps of where the known gangsters
live, where they frequent," she said. Some gang members live in the
200 Street corridor, she said.

"We are doing everything we can to make sure they are not welcome
here," she said.

Uniformed officers from the gang task force spend a lot of time at
Langley's nightclubs and are ejecting known gang members, she said.
Police are in constant contact with both uniformed and behind the
scene officers working on the gang task force.

Langley police are focusing in on street level drug activity, she
said. Some of the most recent murders are drug-related.

IHIT investigators are receiving good leads in the shooting death of
Laura Lynne Lamoureux, whose body was found in the City on March 14.
Lamoureux, 36, was a well-known street-level drug dealer with many
serious criminal charges against her, including assaulting a police
officer, uttering threats and gun offences. Langley RCMP's core team
officers are assisting police in Lamoureux's case because of their
experience working on City streets, where she was known.

Her body was found on 50 Avenue near 202 Street - about seven blocks
east of where Marc Bontkes was found shot to death in Hi Knoll park
five days later. The death of Kyle Barber in his Aldergrove home on
March 28 is also believed to be drug-related.

There has been three targeted murders in less than two months of
2009. In comparison, Langley only recorded two murders last year, one
unsolved, involving of a man whose body was dumped on the Katzie
reserve. The other was the road-rage death of Silas O'Brien.

The eruption of violence and open-air targeted murders in Metro
Vancouver is due to rival gangs fighting over drug territory and
retaliating against each other violently, among other issues, she said.

While cocaine prices are way up, she doesn't think this current gang
violence is "specifically driven by cocaine prices."

"It's about greed, money, members switching from gang to gang, about
territory," she said.

It's also about the inability to pay back drug debts, Armstrong
explained. If someone is trafficking drugs they have to provide money
back to the kingpin. When that money isn't paid, that drug dealer has
to pay a tax or face violence and death.

Outreach workers who work with street people, along with Salvation
Army, have noticed the amount of drug availability has grown in the
City in the past six months and so has the violence.

Armstrong said police are challenged with an anxious public who want
crimes to be solved immediately. This contrasts with some victims and
victims' families unwilling to co-operate with the police.

"Sometimes we even have witnesses not willing to tell us anything," she said.

Police are then faced with lengthy undercover operations and seeking
access for wire taps.

"If someone has information for us you can report it to us
anonymously either through Crimestoppers or by getting in touch with
us anonymously. It's all good information we could use," she said.
"We can't be apathetic. We all have to do our part."

Meanwhile, Armstrong, along with both Langley mayors, is part of a
large group that will be lobbying for justice reform in regards to
letting police get wire taps of cellphones and seeing tougher
sentences for gang crimes.