(This column was published in the North Shore News on Jan. 7, 2004)
Organized crime grows well in B.C.
By Leo Knight
The weekend ended with another outrage on Vancouver streets.
Shots were fired into a crowd leaving a nightclub.
The result: two dead and four wounded.
The shooters, as of this writing, are unknown to police.
But they were described by witnesses as Indo-Canadian males.
Does this sound familiar to anyone?
The week began with the RCMP and Victoria police executing search warrants within the Legislature of British Columbia.
At a police press conference the next day, RCMP Sgt. John Ward stated what regular readers of this space have been reading for years.
Said Ward, "I can say that in general, the spread of organized crime just in the past two years has been like a cancer on the social and economic well-being of all British Columbians."
Well, he narrowed it to the past two years, but we can take it a bit further back than that.
On Dec 29, 1999, in this space, appeared these words: "If the threat of nuclear war was the defining point of the 20th century, then organized crime is poised to be the defining point, or threat, of the 21st century."
Without question, the remarks made by Ward to kick off the press conference were designed to elicit a significant response.
Unfortunately, he followed up those words with little detail, leaving in his wake, a snapping, howling, ignorant media brigade trying to figure out what he was trying to tell them.
And the speculation has been wild.
In this province with the polarized nature of the politics, many, if not most on the NDP and union side of things have been screaming for all manner of things from the premier or by Gary Collins, the finance minister and government House leader.
But their focus is misdirected.
It is true, as stated by Ward and Victoria police Chief Paul Battershill, that organized crime is involved.
In fact, it is the genesis of the probe.
It's all about family you see.
The individuals involved have some not-so-savoury relatives. In and of itself, this means little. But, the greater influence one can exert, the more significant the individual is for targeting by the organized crime groups.
It's my guess this is where the police investigation is going.
Exerting influence or "influence peddling" is a long-standing tactic for organized crime groups. Whether going after politicians directly or forging ties with staffers or co-opting the services of clerks with access to government databases; all organized crime groups work at this.
In today's world the organized crime picture has changed.
The crime groups are getting stronger, richer and more, dare I say, organized. But they are also getting more violent.
The rapid spread of grow ops throughout every neighbourhood has led to violent disputes, pitched battles and murder.
Even new words and phrases have grown from the activities.
"Grow rip" has become almost standard fare in the average police media liaison officer's lexicon. So too are "turf war" and "tit-for-tat" killing.
The biker wars in Quebec garnered much media attention as more than 170 people were killed between 1994 and last year's major arrests of the Hells Angels' Nomads chapter, their puppet club, the Rockers and the Bandidos, formerly the Rock Machine.
In Vancouver, in roughly the same time period, there have been more than 70 murders directly related to the Indo-Canadian gang war alone.
Factor in the bikers, Vietnamese, Asian gangs, Eastern European groups and other organized crime groups and the numbers grow dramatically, approaching the Quebec levels.
But where are the cries from the media to do something about it?
Why aren't people howling here the way they were in Quebec, demanding an end to the violence?
Why aren't we screaming at the politicians to do something about this scourge, especially now that it seems to have touched their own offices?
I honestly don't know.
Here, police resources are so diminished they shut down the task force concentrating on the Indo-Canadian gang war.
The Organized Crime Agency is fighting for its life after the politics of policing hijacked its budget.
There have been some successes, but not enough.
Police simply do not have the resources, both in manpower and funding to attack the problem in any meaningful way.
Ward said that organized crime and the drug trade have "reached critical mass" in British Columbia.
On Saturday morning, Rachel Davis tried to stop a fight. Five men were kicking one man on the ground.
She stepped in and a gangster pulled a gun and shot her in the face. One more victim of organized crime.
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