Even as the murder rate has doubled this year and gang violence seems to spiral out of control, the province has failed to come up with a comprehensive strategy to break the cycle that is engendering and perpetuating this criminal situation.
With a steady stream of news reports on the deteriorating crime situation, many of us feel insecure as gangs such as the United Nations seem invincible and police appear only to be either reacting to each incident after the fact or groping in the dark, stumbling from one case to another.
When I put this to West Vancouver Police Chief Kash Heed, he responded: “It’s no surprise to me when I read those reports because, although we are talking about the U.N. Gang right now, recall that back in 2002 we were talking pretty well exclusively about Indo-Canadian gangs. If you go back further to 1995, we were alarmed by some of the Vietnamese gang activity. And then there was a period when we were talking about the Hells Angels. Now we are talking about the UN gang.”
“So it doesn’t make any difference who you are talking about, what ethnic group you are referring to, what gang you are singling out, the situation remains the same. These activities have been taking place for quite some time and we have failed as law enforcement, as a criminal justice system, as a school system, as a community, and in how we raise our youth.”
“And this is a clear indication of where we have failed because we still have a percentage of people who go towards this lifestyle, that want to be part of this particular lifestyle, that think that this is what they should grow up to be when in fact the majority of gang members either end up dead, in jail or addicted to drugs.”
Heed pointed out that the police forces’ job is to interdict crimes and put people in front of the courts. He said: “Whether it’s the United Nations or the Hells Angels or any Asian-based crime group or the Independent Soldiers or any of the Indo-Canadian gangs, the response has to be the same. We’ll always put people in jail, that’s something we do for a living.”
“But you’ve got to balance it off to crack the cycle because when you take some of these prolific gang members out of circulation, the void is filled by up-and-comers. So as a result, we haven’t really broken the cycle of gang violence simply because we don’t have a comprehensive, coordinated, assertive prevention strategy in place.
“ … This is something that I have advocated for years now. From day one when we started looking at this particular issue, I advocated breaking that cycle, and unfortunately, we’re not doing as good as we could be doing.”
So how does one go about changing the whole system?
Heed noted that first of all the balkanized law enforcement structure had to be fixed. In other words, a unified regional police force.
He added: “Because then you start to put gang crime control as a key focus, you start to put leaders in place in that police structure and you have the ability to hold those leaders accountable.”
Heed then pointed out that we had to look at four streams to tackle the gang situation: the family, the school system, the community, and the criminal justice system. All four had to be actively involved in the process.
He said: “You have to start ensuring that the young people do not look at this as something they want to get involved in. You focus on this, and then you start to make sure that we have the support systems and the energy in place to deal with it from a family perspective.
“Then you look at the school system. What can be done in that structure to ensure that people don’t get involved in that behaviour from an educational perspective, knowing full well that a lot of the associations, a lot of the relationships are developed in the schools simply because they are the institutions that sees our youths from a very young age to their teens.
“Then you’ve got to look at the community, what the community can actually do to crack this cycle of gang behaviour.
“And then you’ve got to look at the criminal justice system, what the criminal justice system can do.”
So it all boils down to who’s going to take this challenge on – and to The VOICE and its readers it’s quite clear that SOMEONE IN GOVERNMENT has to show that leadership.
|
