SPECIAL POLICE UNIT KEEPS BUSY CRACKING DOWN ON STREET GANGS

Violence Feared. Spokesman Says There Are 124 Gangs Working In British Columbia

Police head in the front door. Hells Angels head out the back.

It's 10:40 p.m. on Friday at No. 5 Orange and the Vancouver police
gang-violence task force is making its first bar check of the
evening. Members will conduct four more such scans before drunken
brawls on Granville Street require their full attention.

It's a typical night for the city's newest task force. And as The
Province took an exclusive look at the unit at work, one startling
safety fact about the city's night scene surfaced: Every bar tour
would unearth at least one gangster.

The checks done by the task force are critical to preventing gang
violence in the city, says Sgt. Rod Pedersen, who founded the unit.

"Vancouver is the honeypot where all these different crime groups and
factions come to play and do business," says Pedersen, a 28-year
veteran of the force. "We don't back down from these guys. We're more
than willing to get in their faces.

"We're sending a clear message. Every time we see them, we're going
to stop and say hi."

In police parlance, "saying hi" means scanning IDs, conducting
pat-down and vehicle searches, checking no-contact orders and curfews
- -- and whispering the key message into the right ears: We know who
you are, and you're not welcome here.

The 18 members of the task force know their targets and after two
weeks' work, the targets know they are being watched.

"As soon as they see us, they're running now," says Pedersen. "It's
totally opposite to the way they used to be."

On this night, the Hells Angels leave the crowded strip bar via the
back door, pull jackets over vests emblazoned with the gang's
signature winged skull and pile in to a vehicle.

Task force member Sgt. Doug Spencer pulls them over a few blocks away.

The driver is a full-patch member of the Haney chapter. He is
chaperoning Angels from Edmonton and is "extremely upset" by the
inconvenience, Spencer says with a smile.

The carload of gangsters is allowed to move on. No matter. The unit
has gained valuable intelligence about who is talking with who. That
information will be shared with law-enforcement agencies across
Canada, a key priority for the task force.

They'll complete 12 such reports on this shift.

Back at the No. 5, officers check the identification of two short men
with copper tans, expensive jeans and predatory smirks. Their
demeanour oozes arrogance. Other police are patting down an immense
young man in a black leather jacket. The naked dancer moves on stage,
seemingly oblivious. Bar patrons' eyes flit between her and the cops
as police wade in to the smoking room and haul out a diminutive,
well-dressed man with a baby face.

The slick, grinning duo, their little friend and the big man are all
ushered out and their vehicle searched. Baby-faced or not, the four
are members of the United Nations gang, an increasingly powerful
criminal force in the Lower Mainland, with approximately 70 confirmed
members and 300 associates carving out territory wherever they can
find or take it.

"The UN gang is the most feared gang out there, because of the level
of violence," says Det. Const. Dawn Richards. "These young guys, they
won't back down."

Persian gangs and the UN are fighting right now, as are the UN and
Hells Angels and any number of other known criminal organizations.
The list is virtually endless, with 124 identified gangs at work in
the province.

The fear is that gunfire will erupt in Vancouver, catching innocent
civilians in the crossfire.

"It could happen in any nightclub, at any time for any reason,"
Pedersen notes. "They just don't think about the consequences of
their actions. They're not so much fearless as they are stupid."

The task-force concept originated with the firearms interdiction team
in August 2004 after high-profile gang-shooting murders at Loft 6 and
Club Aqua.

The gang-violence task force follows the FIT model: identify, locate
and intercept in whatever legal way possible. It's on a three-week
trial run through the end of March, brought about by five gang
shootings and two murders in the city in recent weeks.

Pedersen says cancelling the effort now would be asinine.

"[The gangsters] will return to bringing violence to the city," he
says. "If the public only knew how busy these guys are, it would be a
real eye-opener. We're only scratching the surface."

After the No. 5, the unit heads to the Drake, where Pedersen has been
told there are several full-patch Angels.

It wouldn't be much of a surprise. John Bryce, the president of the
Angels East End chapter, has listed the Drake Hotel's Powell Street
address as headquarters for a numbered company he owns.

There are three men outside. One runs inside when the six police cars
pull up. Pedersen and the team file in. Again, the Angels are gone.

Full-patch Nomad Robert Green is there, though, in the smoking room,
puffing on a cigar and wearing a sweatshirt with the Angels insignia
on his chest. He manages the show lounge and he's not happy to see
Pedersen and his colleagues. Equally displeased are two young men the
officers pull outside and search because they reek of marijuana and
are sitting with a prolific bud grower.

The last club of the night is Au Bar. It's there police come across
Aman Lalli, a member of the Independent Soldiers gang who has the
tattoos on his left forearm to prove it.

Lalli just happened to be in Loft 6 in August of 2003 when guns were
drawn and his best friend, Paul Dosanjh, was shot in the head.
Dosanjh survived that incident, only to be shot to death in a
restaurant in March 2004.

Lalli is found in the bathroom at Au Bar. He chats politely with the
officers; they take a look at his tattoo. All the while, Lalli holds
his hands in front of him, palms pressed together as if in prayer. He
looks to be about 12 years old.

There's no shortage of kids ready to replace him. The next generation
is posing already -- online, with guns and knives, until they can do
so legally in bars.

On websites like Nexopia and MySpace, they boast of belonging to
gangs like Surrey Thugs Incorporated, Skeena Boys, Sunset Boys, Cop
Killing Villains, Night Crawlers and the Rez Back Pinoiz.

The number of gang members has increased "overwhelmingly" in
Pedersen's time with the police force, as have the ways police go after them.

Pedersen says it's the result of choosing a life in gangs that has
stayed the same.

"We see the gritty side of it," he says. "We've got to deal with the
broken bodies and the blown-out brains. It's not very glamorous then."