(This
column was published in the North
Shore News on
Aug 20, 2003)
Organized crime biggest threat to society
By Leo Knight
THE headlines in the weekend papers told the tale - another violent night in our city, a city struggling for acceptance as "world class." A city trying to promote itself as "fun," only seven years away from hosting the world when the Winter Olympics come to town, yet again, having its streets stained with blood.
"Triple murder at 4 a.m.," blared the front page of the Sunday Province. Inside, the headline, The City Has Gone Insane Tonight, was the quote from a cop at the scene of the shooting victim who had crashed his car after being attacked by unknown assailants apparently heavily armed.
The score for the night: three dead, five wounded. At least three of the victims, one of the dead and two of the wounded, were apparently innocent bystanders, cut down by the insanity.
What wasn't said in the stories about the weekend shootings in a Gastown nightclub - and the non-lethal shooting in the West End a couple of nights earlier - was the ethnic origin of the main players in the bloody drama. A possible connection to organized crime elements of the Iranian community is interesting because it has largely been ignored by the media.
Preliminary details are sketchy and, to press time, Iranian involvement in the Gastown shootings has yet to be confirmed by police. But is the mainstream media in this town so politically correct they won't call a criminal group what it is?
It's an interesting question. The RCMP has certainly noticed the problem. They now have a section, albeit small, devoted entirely to gathering intelligence on the criminal elements of the Iranian community.
Based in North Vancouver, the unit consists of three members. Since their inception, they have quickly gained experience that only a baptism of fire can give.
You see, while the majority of the Iranian community may be hard-working contributors to society there exists this criminal element that has grown up out of the humble origins of the Persian Pride street gang of the late '80s.
These guys want to play with the big boys like the Hells Angels and the Italian mob. They were on the periphery of the Dosanjh-Johal drug war and were more heavily involved in the many, many murders committed in the "Indo" drug war in Vancouver which has been waged over much of the past seven years.
What is clear is that the Gastown shootings bring the violence in the gang wars in the city to a new level. And they come hard on the heels of the multiple shooting that was definitely linked to Iranian organized crime only days earlier in the West End of Vancouver. One of the three victims in that episode was a North Vancouver resident.
When gang members shoot and kill each other, for the most part, we say "Well, so be it. Live by the sword and die by the sword." It's a little bit of "I'm all right Jack." And we let it go on virtually without comment as long as we, as a community in general, are not affected.
But the weekend shootings occurred in the trendy Loft Six night club, not a gang hangout. The shooter or shooters, snuffed out the life of an innocent person and wounded two others who were doing nothing more than enjoying the night life of our fair city.
I have written extensively about organized crime over the years. I believe organized crime represents a bigger threat to our society than any other single thing. Yet we remain remarkably apathetic to the reality.
If the outrageous interest rates charged because of credit card fraud, or the vulnerability of identity theft or stock market manipulation or any of the other favourite revenue generators of organized crime fail to get your attention, then perhaps the shooting of three innocent bystanders, who could easily have been your son or daughter might.
We need to fight this plague on our society, be they upstart Iranian gangsters, Indo Canadian dope dealers or Hells Angels who, for some bizarre reason, still enjoy a kind of folk-hero worship.
We need to take this plague seriously.
And so do our politicians who have the power over policy and purse strings to fight back.
***
On Monday I was privileged to partake in the Second Annual Mountie Shoot Out, a charity golf tournament to support the North Shore Crisis Services Society and the Seymour Community Services Society.
For the record, our foursome consisting of myself, Constable Susan Sanford of the North Vancouver Sex Crime Unit, Ashley Cooper, President of Paladin Security Group and Glen Magel, a former North Van Mountie and now director of Safety and Security for BCIT, shot a combined 11 under par and tied for the lead.
The tournament was put together by Const. Cam Kowalski and his dedicated team of volunteers. North Shore business members and community leaders banded together to support these worthwhile causes.
Unofficially, at evening's end, I was told over $10,000 will be handed over to support women in crisis and seniors in our community in need.
Well done, Cam and your team.
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