Gazette - Not in my backyard

COVER SECTION

Rural responses to gang activity

By Caroline Ross

Barry Mayoros,
Prince Albert Correctional Centre
Scorpion tattoos like this one help identify members of La Loche’s Scorpion Brothers (SB) gang. The SB captain sporting this tattoo has been in and out of correctional facilities since his youth.

Street gang activity in Canada is no longer just an urban phenomenon. Gangs are moving beyond the big cities and taking hold in smaller, more remote communities.

The trend is particularly evident in Canada’s Prairie provinces — Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba — where major Aboriginal gangs have taken advantage of cultural connections in outlying native communities to grab new turf, open new markets, recruit new members and escape big-city police enforcement.

Here’s a look at the situation in three Prairie communities — and a glimpse at how rural police are combating the problem.

The Pas, Manitoba:
Gateway to the North

The Pas, population 5,600, is located 620 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, Manitoba. People come here for the Trappers’ Festival in February or to view the northern lights year-round, but street gangs have other plans.

The Pas has become a provincial hub for the Indian Posse (IP), one of Manitoba’s largest Aboriginal street gangs, says Cpl Lee Fortin of The Pas RCMP General Investigation Section. The gang has set up a crack cocaine outpost, shuttling $500-an-ounce crack up from Winnipeg and selling it for over $1,500 an ounce in The Pas vicinity.

“In Winnipeg, (gang members) are facing gang shootings and a lot of opposition,” says Fortin. Things are cooler in The Pas, he says, because the IP virtually owns the local drug market and has effectively snuffed out rival gangs. “A lot of our high-ranking IP members in the North are from The Pas region, so this is home ground.”

Many local players commit crimes elsewhere in Manitoba, then return to The Pas to lay low, says Fortin. When the RCMP hounds them out, some gangsters seek refuge in other northern communities.

This transient behaviour is one of the reasons why the RCMP’s 19 northern Manitoba detachments convened the Northern Intelligence Program in 2006. Detachment representatives meet at least twice a year to share local gang and drug intelligence with one another, and with provincial criminal intelligence analysts, Crown attorneys and the Winnipeg-based Integrated Gang Intelligence Unit.

The program has helped police link northern gang members with activity in three or four detachments and with crimes down south, says Fortin, and it’s a particularly valuable forum for small, busy northern detachments.

“Unfortunately . . . we don’t always (have time to) call the surrounding detachments to see if anyone’s heard of this guy. So we’re making the connections there (at the meetings), and then we know what to focus on.”

La Loche, Saskatchewan: End of the jail trail

La Loche, Saskatchewan, is an 11-hour car journey northwest of Regina, at the very end of Highway 155. Most of the community’s 2,300 residents are members of the Dene native band, historical rival to the province’s Cree majority. When that rivalry hit the provincial correctional system, La Loche’s top gang was born.

Are gangs moving into your community?

Here are four signs that might mean the answer is yes:

• sudden influx of non-residents
  (e.g., local hotels busier than normal)
• local drug traffickers less active (perhaps “muscled out” by a new gang)
• increase in violent crime
• unfamiliar faces around town (particularly “stand outs” who may be affiliated with a new gang)

  Courtesy Alberta RCMP training video “Aboriginal gangs: from pow-wows to prison cells.”
  

“La Loche is an institutionalized community,” says Cpl Carrie Boone of the La Loche RCMP. Residents are regularly in and out of correctional facilities in Prince Albert (500 kilometres south), and many families have two or three generations in custody. “It’s almost like a status symbol here, going to jail.”

According to Barry Mayoros, a security intelligence officer at the Prince Albert Correctional Centre, inmates of Dene descent — most of them from the La Loche area — formed the Scorpion Brothers (SB) in 2006 as a means to protect themselves from Cree-based gangs that dominated the institution. When corrections staff tried to quell the problem by moving Cree gang leaders into isolation, the SB recruited more members. They now form the largest gang in the facility.

The SB has taken similar hold in La Loche, says Boone. Incarcerated members usually return to the community upon release and use their connections to peddle drugs in the region.

With a permanent road between La Loche and Fort McMurray, Alberta, now in the works, the local drug trade may soon go inter-provincial. Mayoros is seeing more Alberta gang markings in the Prince Albert Correctional Centre, and he believes that some are from the La Loche area.

La Loche RCMP have taken a zero-tolerance approach to gang activity, strictly enforcing bail and release conditions and working closely with Crown council and provincial criminal intelligence units to put gang members behind bars. But it’s a tough battle in a community where the gang, the prison, and the native culture are deeply entwined.

“The prison system is a revolving door,” says Boone, who notes that two high-ranking SB members have recently been released back to the community with no conditions. “It will be interesting to see . . . how long (it takes) before we pick them up for something.”

Hobbema, Alberta: From drive-bys to drill practice

RCMP Members of the Hobbema Cadet Corps practice their marching drills.

Hobbema, Alberta, is fertile ground for gang activity. Located 100 kilometres south of Edmonton, it’s close enough to the big city for all the major gangs to want a piece of the local drug trade. The community’s four native bands don’t always get along, and the massive youth population — over 50 per cent of Hobbema’s 12,000 residents are 18 and under — craves recognition.

Cst Richard Huculiak of the Hobbema RCMP says the gangs use children under age 12 to run drugs and guns, act as lookouts, and participate in stabbings and shootings — basically do the gang’s “dirty work” and shield older members from criminal charges.

“The kids look at it as excitement and something to do,” says Huculiak. “They were looking for some attention, and they got it.”

In November 2005, Huculiak and Sgt Mark Linnell gave the kids another option: they launched the Hobbema Cadet Corps. Today, 996 cadets — almost one-sixth of Hobbema’s youth population — line up twice a week to perfect marching drills that they showcase nationally. Inter-band rivalries are breaking down, and over 250 cadets are now preparing for careers with the RCMP, the Canadian military and the oil and banking industries.

“We’ve taken the kids back, and given them something more positive and structured and educational to do,” says Huculiak, who co-ordinates the cadet program. He notes that 2007 was the first year in two decades that youth crime and violence in Hobbema did not increase.

While the cadet corps can’t claim all the credit for the positive results — Hobbema RCMP launched a 10-member Community Response Unit (CRU) to target gangs and drugs in 2006 — the program has definitely put a dent in gang recruiting, says Cpl Keith Durance of the CRU.

“A lot of these kids that turn to gangs are looking for a feeling of belonging, and that’s where the cadet corps comes in. Instead of going to a gang, they belong to a different group that has much more positive things going on for them.”