“A crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper said last Thursday, as he stood in a Burnaby, B.C., maintenance shed to announce $350 million in federal support for a suburban extension to the Lower Mainland’s rapid transit system. While the morning’s theme was economic stimulus, he confronted a different crisis that afternoon: a plague of gang war and youth crime waged on the streets of Metro Vancouver, the Fraser Valley—and in communities across the country.
In February alone, there were some 19 shootings in the Lower Mainland, eight deaths and a mounting fear that authorities were powerless to stop the anarchy. And with good reason. In 1997 there were 28 gang-related murders in Canada. By 2007 that climbed to 117. One of every five people killed in Canada is now the victim of a gang hit. While B.C. has the current political spotlight, it accounted for just 20 per cent of gang murders in 2007. One of every four gang killings, in fact, happened in Ontario. Where there is progress, even that is a mixed blessing. Twelve years ago, Quebec accounted for a staggering 61 per cent of the nation’s gang murders. By 2007 its share was down to 19 per cent, not because Quebec is more peaceful, but because gangs in other provinces are more violent.
The impact of gang warfare is shot through the statistics in this, the second annual national crime rankings, as compiled by Maclean’s with Statistics Canada’s data (see page 22). StatsCan reports the crime rate hit its lowest point in 30 years in 2007. That good news is tempered by the intractable problem of violent youth crime—on the rise since the mid-1980s, and a troubling entry point into gang life. Although the level is unchanged from 2006, it is double the rate of 20 years ago. The homicide rate by minors dropped, but it remains the second-highest since 1961.
On the day his justice minister, Rob Nicholson, tabled in Ottawa the first of a series of proposed laws to hike penalties and impose mandatory minimum sentences for gun, gang and drug crimes, Harper convened in Vancouver a closed-door meeting of regional police chiefs, and the families of the victims of gang mayhem. To his left sat Vancouver police Chief Jim Chu and to his right was Eileen Mohan, whose 22-year-old son Chris was one of two innocent witnesses killed in a gang massacre that claimed six lives in a suburban Surrey apartment block during a previous wave of violence in 2007. Harper looked around the table at the 15 or so in attendance. I’ll give you each four minutes, he said, tell me one thing the government can do to help.
Also at Macleans.ca: Q &A with Michael Chettleburgh, the author of ‘Young Thugs,’ on suburbanization of gangsters
There were calls for more resources, for tougher sentences for prolific offenders and programs to keep vulnerable youth out of the clutches of gangs. But all of Harper’s measures so far, which he concedes are a first step, are predicated on punishing those who get caught—an all too infrequent occurrence. Solving the crisis will take more than adding a few pages to a bloated Criminal Code, and firing off drive-by comments on the “soft-on-crime policies” of his political opponents. It’s not just bleeding hearts who say that, but overwhelmed local politicians, crime analysts and street-hardened cops.
Gangsters across the country are getting away with murder. Three men, two with gang ties, were killed by gunmen who burst into a Calgary Vietnamese restaurant on New Year’s Day. No arrests. The six killed 17 months ago were in a neighbouring apartment to the Mohans. No arrests. And just last week, murder charges were withdrawn against two Toronto men accused of a gun slaying last March, after fearful witnesses were unwilling to testify. Abdikarim Abdikarim, 18, was killed and five others were wounded as gunmen opened ?re in an apartment lobby. The murder was caught on grainy closed-circuit surveillance tape, later posted by police on YouTube. Without witnesses, even that was deemed insufficient evidence to convict.
Are shooters fixated on sentencing provisions and parole eligibility as they blaze away? Unlikely. More probably they gamble on the slim odds of capture by overworked murder squads, drowning in paperwork and shackled by legal precedents.
Where there is success, the resources required are staggering. Last month, 60 arrests were made as police targeted the middle and upper echelons of a drug distribution ring in Montreal and parts of Ontario. Project Axe was 2½ years in the making and involved 700 police officers from six police forces in Quebec and Ontario. The resulting arrests highlight the frustrating realities of modern-day gangsterism, says Charles Mailloux, a Montreal police inspector with the special investigations unit. The current ring replaced a drug network run by biker gangs until it was blown apart in an earlier police sweep in 2001. “That created a void that was filled by the street gangs,” he says.
