(This column was published in the North Shore News on Mar. 3, 2004)
Guns galore for B.C.'s organized crime
By Leo Knight
VANCOUVER Police Department (VPD) Insp. Kash Heed came out swinging in the media on the weekend, decrying the "alarming increase" and "significant spike" in violence committed with guns throughout the Lower Mainland.
On Monday, VPD Insp. Val Harrison, the officer in charge of the West End, said on a radio program, "It's now easier to get a gun in Vancouver than ever before." Bullets are flying with alarming regularity in Vancouver these days. There are more and more guns in the hands of criminals. You might wonder how this could have happened, what with our billion-dollar (or so) gun registry that successive justice ministers have promised us would save lives.
The simple answer is that the gun registry is only effective for those who are already predisposed to obeying the law. Otherwise, guns are a commodity for the criminal class - most especially, the organized element of the criminal class.
With the proliferation of B.C. Bud and the tens of thousands of grow-ops throughout the Lower Mainland churning out new crops every six weeks, the beckoning market south of the 49th provides an eager and waiting customer base. It's traded for cocaine and guns; lots of guns, semi-automatic pistols, AK-47s, M-16s, AR-15s, MAC-10 machine pistols, the lot. And, the practical reality is the federal government's billion-dollar (or so) gun registry simply can't do a damn thing about it.
There are more than 70 bodies and counting in the Indo gang war for control of their segment of the drug trade in the Vancouver area. There are another 50 or so and probably more which can be attributed to the bikers' domination. (My figures are judged to be conservative by VPD Const. Anne Drennan.) Then there are the occasional freaks and wannabe gangsters who start tossing shots around like spit balls when they take offence at something someone said in a nightclub, popping off the odd innocent person.
Make no mistake about it, this is a huge problem.
According to a story in a weekend newspaper, Vancouver police took 45 guns off the streets for the first 10 months of 2003. In all of 2002, there were 42 seized by VPD. This, of course, does not factor any of the weapons seized by any of the other municipal police forces or any of the RCMP detachments in the Lower Mainland in the same period. By comparison, last year, New York City police seized 302 guns from the streets of all five boroughs combined -in New York, a city more than five times the size of Greater Vancouver.
What's happening here is that organized crime is taking over. Or perhaps I should say has taken over. For all intents and purposes, they have had a virtual free rein in this province for years. There has been lots of tough talk from the politicians at various levels. I remember writing a piece 10 years ago after then premier Mike Harcourt promised to "get tough" on crime. There has been a parade of similar announcements since by politicians of all stripes. The current man in the chair, Solicitor General Rich Coleman has, for some reason, allowed himself to be talked into punching the ticket of the Organized Crime Agency. While all the hand-wringing was going on here, the police forces in Quebec have struck another devastating blow to the Hells Angels in that province. Two years ago, they took down the most powerful chapter, Maurice (Mom) Boucher's Nomads are all in jail now, most, like Boucher, for a long time.
They began working on the chapter that tried to pick up the Nomads' shattered pieces almost as soon as the ink was dry on the indictments. The result was the execution of more than 200 warrants last week with a force of more than 2,000 police officers involved in the dawn raids. Every member of the South (Montreal) chapter of the biker gang was arrested.
So, how is it possible the police in Quebec can engineer not one, but two major investigations that have crippled the Hells Angels and their support gang, the Evil Ones. They have not, by any stretch of the imagination been defeated, but they know they are in a battle.
Not in British Columbia. Here they operate with virtual impunity. And the guns that come into this country as payment for their products, are claiming more victims all the time. Truth be told, Heed's "alarming increase" and "significant spike" comments don't do justice to the proliferation of guns, gangsters and violence in our city. Across the country they have struck a decisive blow against organized crime and sent a strong message to the gangsters.
Here, the message sent is that we are dismantling the agency with the mandate to fight them.
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