Gazette - Ganging up on a growing concern

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Fifteen years ago, the street gang phenomenon in Canada was barely a blip on our collective radar. Even among those who were aware of increasing gang-related violence, several merely pointed to the evolving street gang epidemic to our south and shrugged off our own comparatively small problem. Not so anymore. Canada’s gang culture, complete with regional characteristics, is alive and growing. Street gangs are active in all of Canada’s major cities — including Toronto and Winnipeg, where the gang-related killings of two innocent bystanders in 2005 shook the Canadian public — but they are also taking hold in our medium-sized municipalities, suburban communities, Aboriginal reserves and rural towns.

We devote this issue to better understanding the trends in Canada’s street gangs, and the gang situation in other countries. We look at how police and community leaders are grappling with this problem and, most importantly, how they are working together to find solutions. We begin in Vancouver, British Columbia (B.C.), where street gangs have carved out a visible presence in the province’s lucrative drug trade. Writer Caroline Ross talks to members of the B.C. Integrated Gang Task Force, a covert unit of investigators and analysts whose job is to identify, investigate and prosecute those involved in the most violent gangs. Read about how sharing even the smallest tidbit of information can be vital for the success of an investigation.

We hear from Det/Sgt Douglas Quan, a member of the Toronto Police Service’s Integrated Gun and Gang Task Force, who explores the face of street gangs in Canada’s largest city and how it is evolving. No longer exclusively territorial or ethnically based, gangs in Toronto are moving outside of their traditional boundaries to capture wealth and notoriety. While the numbers tell us that most street gangs continue to plague large urban centres, this too is changing. Gangs are now moving beyond the big cities into smaller, more remote communities to grab new turf and avoid big-city police enforcement. We take a look at three Prairie communities — The Pas, Manitoba; La Loche, Saskatchewan; and Hobbema, Alberta — and some of the measures that local police are taking to turn the problem around. Author Michael Chettleburgh describes what he calls the hybridization of street gangs in Canada — a new multi-ethnic brand that is more interested in producing synthetic drugs than flashing gang signs and colours. He outlines what needs to be done over the next decade to slow their growth.

Meanwhile, Luciano Bentenuto of the Correctional Service of Canada explains how curbing gang growth in our prisons is critical to stopping their escalation outside. From the United States, we chat with sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh about his unusual research project: he spent almost 10 years observing the leader and activities of a Chicago street gang. We also get the straight goods from Tony Moreno, a former LAPD gang cop, who spells out what works and what doesn’t on that beat.

From the streets of LA and other large U.S. cities to the neighbourhoods of Central America, Héctor Lombardo Morales Rodríguez of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Guatemala describes the evolution of the extremely violent maras. He explains why a new approach to law enforcement and a better understanding of what makes these gangs tick are critical to curbing the problem. Finally, we get two perspectives on the violent youth gangs in France. Richard Pla, of the French National Police, speaks about the gang problem in Vénissieux and the operational partnerships that police have struck to defray gang activity before it takes hold. And criminologist Christophe Soullez offers a fascinating comparison of gangs in France and Canada.

One thing is certain: street gangs are no longer a blip on the screen. And we have to go beyond enforcement to move in the right direction.

Katherine Aldred