Gang war not the first or last linked to BC's booming drug industry
Mar 15, 2009
VANCOUVER, B.C. - A laid-back attitude towards drug use, easy
access over a largely unsecured U.S. border and a vast backcountry
with a climate ripe for growing the potent marijuana known around
the world as B.C. bud.
It's little wonder British Columbia has become the centre of
Canada's illicit drug trade and, along with it, a focal point
for the multiplicity of gangs that are currently fighting a bloody
war on Vancouver-area streets to control the lucrative enterprise.
There have been three dozen shootings since late January, leaving
16 people dead. Police have linked the majority to gangs, drugs
and people "known to police."
"The Lower Mainland area, Metro Vancouver, has become a
safe place in which to grow and produce a variety of drugs,"
says Rob Gordon, director of the criminology school at Simon Fraser
University in Burnaby, B.C.
"It's a combination of our geography, a somewhat more laid-back
approach to drugs and drug use, and the proximity to the border,
easy export routes primarily to the United States - I can't think
of any other city in Canada that shares those characteristics."
Drug use forms part of how outsiders view life in the region
- from the cliche of the pot-smoking West Coast snowboarder to
the drug addicts of Vancouver's troubled Downtown Eastside.
Various estimates of B.C.'s drug trade put its value in the billions
of dollars, with thousands of grow operations.
But nearly all of those drugs are connected to the province's
roughly 130 gangs.
Gangs with guns. Gangs who fight turf wars.
"You're always going to have violence in some fashion when
you have groups that are profiting illegally from drug trafficking,
because there's money to be made there and there's territory that
needs to be forcibly kept," says Supt. Dan Malo, head of
the province's Integrated Gang Task Force.
"Once they have the territory, it's not a deed. Every day
there's somebody trying to take that away from you."
Police have been vague about what exactly is behind the latest
wave of violence in Vancouver and surrounding communities.
Malo says much of the fighting can be linked to disputes among
several main groups, notably the United Nations Gang, the Independent
Soldiers and the Red Scorpions.
But he says smaller, largely unrelated rivalries appear to have
boiled over at the same time, creating the impression that all
of the shootings are part of the same battle.
"It is really the perfect storm in a lot of ways,"
he says. "The timing is somewhat coincidental. The conflicts
are separate from each other."
The shootings have left many residents on edge, calling police
whenever they hear the blare of sirens.
Politicians have promised extra cops and tougher laws for gang-related
crimes, and police have held news conferences to highlight arrests
and play show-and-tell with the arsenals of guns they've collected.
Vancouver's mayor has offered his own blunt assessment: Police
are fighting a losing battle.
And while they highlight successes, even police view the problem
in almost prophetic terms: It has happened before, and it will
happen again.
"I think we'd be naive to think otherwise - I don't think
we're going to be out of a job in that sense," says Malo,
who was appointed to the gang task force last year.
"The next trend will come, it's just how far back we can
push it."
The last major spike in gang violence happened in the fall of
2007 with a rash of shootings and more than 10 killings, including
the discovery of six bodies in a Surrey apartment. Two of the
men found dead were innocent bystanders.
It happens every few years, and shouldn't come as a surprise
to police or the public, says gang expert and author Julian Sher.
"The seeds of the violence we're seeing now didn't happen
this week or this year," says Sher.
"It's been brewing and growing over the last few years as
gangs grow and flourish and stake out their territory."
The violence grows, the bodies pile up.
And then eventually, things calm down again, either because the
police are able to temporarily suppress the shootings or the fighting
tapers off on its own.
"Gang wars end the way all wars end: when everybody's dead
on one side and they run out of bullets, or when they're forced
to make peace," says Sher.
