UNSTABLE GANG SCENE UNIQUE TO B.C.

Composition of Organized Crime Groups Constantly Shifting Due to
Convenient Location and Profitable Grow-Ops, Police Say

VANCOUVER -- A lethal intersection of American guns, sea routes to
Asia and rapidly proliferating marijuana grow-ops has given rise to a
volatile gang scene in British Columbia, police say.

In other parts of Canada, established gangs provide some measure of
stability to their illegal industries - although they can be every bit
as brutal - but in British Columbia, the composition of gangs is
constantly shifting. The result is a more dangerous situation in which
new gangs are aiming to carve out territory or establish their
reputation, putting them on a collision course with existing criminal
outfits.

"What we have here is a phenomenon unlike anywhere else in Canada,"
said Sergeant Shinder Kirk of B.C.'s Integrated Gang Taskforce, a
police group established two years ago in the wake of a slew of
slayings in the Indo-Canadian community.

There are 129 gangs active in B.C. Sgt. Kirk said mid-level gangs in
particular are seeking to establish themselves.

Younger street-level groups frequently shift and disband, making them
harder to track.

What they all have in common is a profit motive built on B.C.'s
massive marijuana exports, which allow gangs to smuggle hard drugs and
high-powered guns into Canada, he said.

The geography of the Lower Mainland plays a big role in British
Columbia's growing gang problem, Sgt. Kirk said. Ports provide ready
access to Asia, and the U.S. border is only a few kilometres away. And
grow-ops are proliferating, giving gangs every incentive to resort to
violence, even murder, to grab a bigger piece of the profits.

The taskforce was founded because of violence in one community, but
the problem of gang life has changed dramatically. Sgt. Kirk said talk
of ethnic gangs misses the reality of gang life in B.C., where the
malleable composition of criminal groups is the only real constant.
Some gang members are poor, some not. Some are dropouts, some are
university graduates, he said.

Yesterday, B.C. Attorney-General Wally Oppal said today's violence
stems from complacency of decades past when the deadly lure of gangs
was played down. "We keep meeting with people at the grassroots level
who are really paying the price for the neglect of the eighties and
the nineties where we didn't do our homework. We had plenty of warning
at that time that gangs were a part of our culture and we as a society
have ignored that, so we have many kids out there who are
dysfunctional, who find gang life to be cool."

Rob Gordon, the head of the criminology department at Simon Fraser
University, said the last wave of gang violence ebbed in the early
1990s following the collapse of the Los Diablos gang.

In part, gang activity dropped simply because active members got older
and acquired some family responsibilities.

But he sees major differences between that earlier era of gang
activity and the current one, with the biggest being the enormous
profits to be made growing, exporting and selling illegal drugs,
mostly marijuana.

Pot may have a benevolent reputation, he said, but any users who
aren't growing their own supplies are fuelling the war playing out on
the streets of the Lower Mainland. "Ultimately, you're contributing to
the violence."

And the level of violence is escalating: There have been high-profile
shootings this year, with bullets flying in public places like the
Fortune Happiness restaurant, threatening to injure innocent people.

Now, in Surrey, two bystanders were not only killed - they were
deliberately murdered.

That indicates that some gangs no longer feel the need to operate in
the shadows, a prospect that Dr. Gordon finds deeply worrisome. "It's
a very public demonstration of power. We should all be concerned."