GANG RECRUITS GETTING YOUNGER

Kids As Young As Eight-Years-Old Hustled For Drug Runs

It happens at schools, on playgrounds and on the street.

Gangs recruit kids as young as eight - to run drugs and act as police
spotters for dealers - in some Toronto housing complexes in Etobicoke.

It's an ongoing battle, fought by police, pastors and parents.
Residents, including children and youth, are being held hostage in
their own neighbourhoods.

"Kids are being recruited as young as age eight or nine. They steal
bikes, run drugs, act as spotters for police. It's a real problem,"
said Pastor Al Bowen of Abundant Life Assembly church.

"The kids do it for change, spare change their parents can't give
them."

One recent report, Bowen said, indicated a 13-year-old boy paid
children as young as seven in spare change to run drugs.

Who are these gangs?

Not Bloods nor Crips nor what the public or the police think of as
"gangs," Bowen says.

"To say these 'gangs' are highly-organized, American urban-style
gangs, well that's sometimes true, but more often, not true. Really
it's not that at all.

"It's a collection of friends in the same neighbourhood who get
themselves into outside-the-law activities. Kids steal bikes, run
drugs, act as spotters for police. They spread (gang) colours, recruit
at schools."

Last week, some kids aged eight to 16 at one Etobicoke housing complex
said they'd never been approached.

But all knew of the gangs.

"Our teachers tell us to go straight home," said one 10-year-old when
asked if she'd seen kids being recruited at school; she hadn't.

Those interviewed requested anonymity fearing retaliation.

Toronto Police say they know gangs recruit kids young, as early as
Grade 4 or 5.

Some mothers from the complex say they talk to their children about
resisting recruitment, not get involved with illegal activities.

Still, threats can make resistance difficult, they
say.

"Some teenagers are forced to get involved," said one mother. "They'll
tell them, 'If you don't do it, I'll kill you.'"

Neither schools nor the police have specific programs to target the
recruitment activities, said one police officer. Officers do visit
schools to talk to kids throughout the school year.

And ESP (Empowered Student Partnership) programs exist at more than 90
schools across the city, say Toronto Police. The program offers
education seminars to students in anti-bullying, sexual assault and
anti-racism, among other topics.

"I stay at home," said a 16-year-old, who lives in the same housing
complex. "I don't come outside because I know what it's like. We all
watch the news every day. We hear about the shootings."

Shootings rocked her neighbourhood again this summer. Toronto Police
say the violence is gang warfare - the highly organized Bloods and
Crips variety - that inspires fear among residents to walk their own
streets.

"The kids are frustrated," said one mother. "'Why can't we sit on our
doorsteps?' they ask. But there are drive-by shootings. Kids say, 'I
want to move.'"

Another woman, a single mother, has lived in the complex where she
raised her children for 17 years. Her son, now 21, has moved out on
his own.

She said she discourages him from visiting at night, afraid he'll be
caught in the crossfire of a shooting.

"I tell him not to visit me after 9 p.m. Your relationship gets cut
off, in a sense.

I'm so scared; I only have one son. I don't want anything to happen to
him. Shootings happen everywhere now," she said.

Two years ago a neighbourhood teen was beaten - for wearing a red
sweater, said another mother. Red is the colour associated with the
Bloods gang. The boy wasn't a gang member, she said. Bowen said
keeping kids busy is the key to keeping them out of gangs - both the
neighbourhood type and the Bloods and Crips variety.

"The only way a parent can keep their kids out of a gang is to keep
them in the house, tell them to play in the backyard, take them to
activities.

"Kids get caught up in the mentality of the neighbourhood by the sheer
fact of friendship, peer groups, and peer pressure. At 12, 13, 14
their mother ceases to be the No. 1 authority in their lives."