Gazette - Targeting street gangs from the ground up

COVER SECTION

British Columbia’s integrated response

By Caroline Ross

Courtesy UGTF
Officers from the Lower Mainland’s Uniform Gang Task Force speak to a member of a notorious Lower Mainland gang after removing him from a Vancouver night club.

It’s midnight at The Standard Bar in New Westminster, just outside Vancouver, British Columbia (B.C.). Four unmarked police cars roll up and eight uniformed officers from the RCMP and six Vancouver-area police departments emerge. Although they hail from different policing jurisdictions, these officers are a united force. Emblazoned across their identical black jackets in bold, reflective letters: “Police Gang Task Force.”

The officers enter the club and move in smooth unison, questioning familiar faces, noting IDs, performing a weapons check, taking an aggressive male into custody. Fifteen minutes later, they’re back on the road, heading to Vancouver’s entertainment district.

Every night of the week, two Uniform Gang Task Force (UGTF) teams like this one patrol the streets, clubs and bars of Vancouver and over 20 surrounding communities. The teams visit some 30 establishments a night. They’re on the lookout for gang members, gang associates, gang vehicles, weapons and broken curfews. Their presence sends a clear message: gang activity won’t be tolerated.

The UGTF is just one of the integrated efforts by Vancouver-area police to combat persistent, problematic street gang violence in B.C.’s Lower Mainland — an area of 2.2 million people mashed into the southwest corner of the province, right against the coast and the U.S. border.

Here, street gangs have carved out a visible presence, entrenching themselves in B.C.’s lucrative drug trade and employing weapons obtained from the U.S. to enforce their turf.

In 2007, there were 247 gang-related shootings in the Lower Mainland, many of them occurring in public spaces like streets, parks, restaurants and clubs. One gang war in a public park littered the area with over 115 shell casings and left bullets in nearby cars and town homes.

In response to the violence, the Lower Mainland’s six municipal police forces and 13 RCMP detachments have combined forces to fight street gang activity, from the ground-level right up to the highest ranks of organized crime.

Street-level violence suppression

The UGTF took to the streets in November 2007 as an “in-your-face” deterrent to gang violence.

“The point of us being out there is to be present, make our appearance obvious and check the known gang targets and known gang associates and their vehicles and any other place in their control for weapons,” says Vancouver Police Insp Dean Robinson, head of the UGTF. “We’re looking for every opportunity to arrest them.”

In its first three months of operation, UGTF teams checked a total of 4,622 individuals and 5,873 vehicles (occupied and unoccupied). They made 19 warrant arrests and issued 35 criminal charges for weapons offences, drug offences, assaults and breach of bail or parole.

“The major players definitely know that we’re out there,” says Chilliwack RCMP Sgt Bryon Massie, speaking during his three-month stint as a UGTF team leader. “They might not come out as often, and they’re not happy about it. We’re disrupting their business.”

Fuelling investigations

The UGTF has also become a valuable source of street-level gang intelligence. The teams are learning who hangs out where, who associates with who, who co-operates and who doesn’t — and they’re recording key observations in nightly occurrence reports.

That’s good news for the B.C. Integrated Gang Task Force (BCIGTF), a covert unit of 60 investigators and analysts from across the Lower Mainland whose job it is to identify, investigate and prosecute gangs involved in chronic, violent criminal activity such as homicides, extortions, drive-by shootings and kidnappings.

Because gang investigations are resource intensive — it can take over 100 officers from multiple agencies to complete a single kidnapping investigation — investigators must go after high-value targets, says Delta Police Supt John Robin, head of the BCIGTF.

The best way to do that, says Robin, is to combine provincial organized crime assessments and criminal intelligence analyses with gritty street-level details, then tie it all together in a tactical, timely manner.

“We need to know that if an individual was checked in Abbotsford, that the same person was checked in Vancouver and that they were potentially related to a shooting in Westminster, and we need to know it now,” says Robin. “It’s no good a month from now.”

Courtesy CFSEU-BC
Vancouver street gangs tried to transport these
duffle bags — stuffed with 147 kilograms of cocaine — from the United States to Canada as part of an international drug smuggling ring. CFSEU-BC and BCIGTF investigators combined forces to disrupt the transportation network.

To that end, the BCIGTF launched an “intelligence hub” concept in November 2007. BCIGTF analysts gather and review gang-related information from multiple sources on a daily basis, siphoning through for high-value nuggets that could bolster existing files, signal new targets or connect investigations. The analysts produce a daily intelligence report (complete with photographs, bail conditions and arrest warrants for known gang targets), then fan it out across the region.

The whole process keeps front-line officers informed of regional gang activities and encourages the officers to feed relevant information back up to investigators and analysts.

The exchange is vital, says Robinson of the UGTF, because the simple observation of a tattoo or gang association “can be gold when it comes to criminal organization investigations later on.”

Links to organized crime

Street gangs are often “the soldiers for organized crime groups,” says Robin of the BCIGTF. Gang investigators must therefore co-ordinate efforts with B.C.’s larger organized crime investigation team, the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit (CFSEU).

“There’s a blurring of lines between the lowest gang — unorganized street crime — all the way up to terrorism,” says RCMP Supt Doug Kiloh of CFSEU-BC. “(The BCIGTF’s) targets — violent street gangs — are trying to make a name for themselves and scratch out their bit of turf. The survivors of that are going to be our main targets in years to come. We have to share information and be alive to what (the other is) working on.”

Case in point: the two units recently determined that they shared a common target — gang members known to the BCIGTF were also part of a larger CFSEU investigation into a major international drug smuggling ring (the gang members were transporting drugs into and out of Canada). The BCIGTF and CFSEU responded by forming a temporary joint team to complete the investigations specific to those gang members.

“We had to reshape to meet the needs of the law and the criminal activity,” says Kiloh. He notes that the CFSEU and BCIGTF are exploring other opportunities for integration, given that they both target “the continuum of organized crime” and have similar requirements for staffing and surveillance. The CFSEU already houses BCIGTF wire tap facilities, exhibits and fleet maintenance.

The future of gang enforcement

It’s clear that the Lower Mainland’s integrated gang enforcement efforts are paying off. Several violent, well-connected gang members are now in custody or facing criminal charges. Police forces are developing a deeper, shared understanding of regional gang culture, and members directly involved in the integrated efforts are building specific skill sets and working relationships that will serve their home agencies well in the future.

Although the UGTF and intelligence hub are still temporary measures — the BCIGTF is seeking permanent funding for both — police officers across the Lower Mainland are keeping their fingers crossed.

Sgt Massie, stationed back with the Chilliwack RCMP, is one of them. “We can’t stop this now.”