RAGING TURF WARS OVER DRUG LOOT LEAVE COPS STRUGGLING TO KEEP UP

'They Do Business Together. The Next Day, They're Enemies.'

At least four gang battles are raging in the Lower Mainland, a police
expert said in the wake of a double killing early yesterday morning.

"This is not one gang war. There are four gang wars," said the police
officer, a Lower Mainland gang specialist, adding that a fifth war is
also brewing.

"There are different battles raging for street-level drug profits,"
said the police source.

Meanwhile, a high-ranking Vancouver officer yesterday called on the
province to revisit the funding devoted to stopping gangs.

"We are overwhelmed with the number of people out there that are
involved in drug trafficking and are involved in gun violence," said
Deputy Chief Bob Rich.

At 2:15 a.m. yesterday, at Granville Street and West 70th Avenue,
hitmen in two SUVs boxed in a leased silver Mercedes in which Ronal
Shakeel Raj, 31, of Surrey, and Ali Abhari, 25, of Kelowna, were riding.

"A passenger came out of one of the SUVs and opened fire through the
passenger window of the Mercedes," said Vancouver Deputy Police Chief
Doug LePard.

A police officer making a traffic stop 11/2 blocks away heard the
gunfire and gave chase, but the killers were too far away, LePard said.

When police arrived, one of the victims was convulsing, one of them
was dead, and music from the pop radio station The Beat 94.5 was
blaring from the Mercedes' stereo.

The murders of Raj and Abhari bring to 10 the number of gang killings
in Vancouver this year. No arrests have been made. In total, 19
people have been murdered in gang-style killings this year in Metro Vancouver.

Court documents show Abhari had a number of pending charges. No
charges showed for Raj.

According to B.C. Assessment Authority documents, a Ronal Shakeel
Raj, listed as a truck driver, co-owns a home with Rimitar Brassett
on Cliffwood Drive in Port Moody.

Records show Raj held leases on a 2003 Cadillac Escalade, a 2007
Mercedes C350W and a 2007 Lexus IS 350.

Investigators believe yesterday's deaths are linked to gunfire
involving two SUVs on Lougheed Highway in Coquitlam on Monday
afternoon. New Westminster officers yesterday detained and then
released suspects in connection with that incident.

According to the gang expert, the Coquitlam shooting, which resulted
in no injuries, and yesterday's killings are likely part of a gang
battle that resulted in the Oct. 19 slaughter of six people in a
Surrey penthouse and the Oct. 10 fatal shooting of Dylan Becker, 38,
near a Surrey McDonald's.

The series of crimes was sparked by an earlier firebombing of a
Surrey crack house known as "the greenhouse," the expert said.

Key players in this particular gang war are connected with the UN
Gang, the Independent Soldiers gang, and an outfit operated by three
Fraser Valley brothers, the expert said.

In the second war, the slaying of Big Circle Boy Hong Chao "Raymond"
Huang in front of his Shaughnessy mansion in Vancouver on Saturday
night is likely linked to the murder of Hiep Quang Do, 51, on
Halloween night in the Vietnamese restaurant Cafe Bien Ho at East
33rd Avenue and Victoria Drive in Vancouver, the expert said. He
added that Do was a player in the Vietnamese underworld, linked to
the Big Circle Boys.

A third war exploded Aug. 9 at the Fortune Happiness Chinese
restaurant on East Broadway in Vancouver, when two killers blasted
away at a table of nine, killing Zachary Ferland, 19, and an unnamed
Asian man, and wounding six people, the expert said.

In the fourth battle, South Asian underworld figure Gurmit Singh Dhak
and a woman were injured when a pair of gunmen opened fire through a
window of Vancouver's posh Quattro restaurant on West 4th Avenue
Sept. 8, the expert said.

"They are all drug-dealing idiots," said another police source.
"They're just all frigging killing each other. It's unbelievable.
They do business together. The next day, they're enemies."

Vancouver police yesterday announced a new gang task force within the
department, supplementing the existing regional, multi-jurisdiction
task force. Rich said the force would redirect resources and
personnel to the new gang team.

"The task force will be very much an in-your-face style of task
force," he said. "It will be confronting people who are gangsters who
are moving about our streets. We'll be checking on where they live."

How many officers and how much money will be directed to the task
force was not released.

Meanwhile, Vancouver police want the province to create an
educational program to prevent kids from turning into gangsters.

"We need to be getting into our schools and getting out with a very
strong message to our young people that this gang lifestyle is the
way of death," Rich said.

"At one point it was cool to carry a pager, and then a cellphone. Now
you're nothing unless you carry a handgun."

Some gangsters are making tens of thousands of dollars a week, LePard
said. "They're leasing fancy cars and fancy apartments and penthouses
. . . and going through a lot of women and drugs."

Rich said Vancouver police are "really interested" in the idea of a
regional police force.