Fear in the city - Gang violence grips the land

bmdbley'sBro · 02-17-2009, 08:50 PM

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wow huh, maybe if lawmakers (nationally) were more worried about crack dealers & shootings in the street over it,
as oppossed to say traffic enforcement & revenue generation off the backs of its citizens
we wouldn't be here.

Quote:

Gang violence grips the land

Fear in the city.. A spate of killings across the country has municipal and provincial police forces scrambling to crack down on street gangs and organized crime

Canada's cities are in the grip of a sharp new cycle of gang violence, fuelled by the country's growing appetite for illicit drugs and competition among the organized crime groups that supply them, police and other experts say.

While organized crime wars are not new to Canada, an alarming wave of gangland shootings, from Halifax to Calgary to Vancouver, has occurred recently in public places where citizens least expect bullets to be flying.

The fear and outrage that settled on Toronto in 2005 when 15-year-old Jane Creba was killed in a shootout in a downtown shopping area has arrived in other cities, whose innocent citizens are being hit.

"We're going through a very significant cycle, where violence has been extremely high," said Sgt. Shinder Kirk, spokesman for British Columbia's Integrated Gang Task Force, a multi-agency police group.

"The public nature of this violence, the callous disregard for the safety of anyone and everyone who may be in a public spot when the shooting occurs, is a great concern to all of us." Why are so many gang hits taking place in public spaces? "Public shootings are a matter of convenience," said Robert Gordon, a criminologist and gang specialist at Simon Fraser University.

"People aren't as easy targets as in the past, so gangs will follow someone around in public until they can make a hit. They're not concerned with collateral damage. All they care about is hitting the target." "Gangs have become much bolder," said Charles Momy, president of the Canadian Police Association.

"Some cities look like they're under siege." Across the country, local politicians and provincial leaders have responded by convening news conferences and community meetings where citizens have expressed outrage at the shootings and the apparent inability of police to control them.

Kash Heed, chief of the West Vancouver Police, recently called gangland violence the city's most "pressing social problem" and admitted that what police have been doing over the past five years to control it "isn't working." There have been eight gangland shooting incidents in Vancouver and its once-bucolic suburbs since New Year's Eve. Four known crime figures, all in their 20s, have been killed and others injured.

Three of the Vancouver-area incidents occurred in busy parking lots outside suburban malls or grocery stores. The latest episode, in the wee hours of Thursday morning, looked like a scene from a Hollywood movie, with gang members firing wildly at each other from their vehicles while tearing around a gas station in Langley, B.C.

No bystanders have been hit in Vancouver this year, but one of the crime figures killed in February was linked to a gangland massacre in 2007, when six people, including two bystanders, were shot to death.

Montreal is also no stranger to gang warfare. Dozens of organized crime suspects, allegedly connected to the cocaine trade, were arrested Thursday in a police sweep across Montreal and Ottawa.

Montreal has also suffered through years of biker gang turf wars, and innocent victims have included prison guards targeted in an attempt to destabilize the justice system.

In Calgary last month, four people were killed, including one bystander, in two separate shootings. Keni Su'a, a 43-year-old Calgarian, was shot dead while eating a meal on New Year's Day, simply for having witnessed the execution of two gang members in the same restaurant.

Two weeks later, another gang member was killed in a hail of bullets fired at his Dodge SUV on a Calgary street. It was the city's fifth public gang shooting since 2007.

In Halifax last November, gang members fired multiple shots into a suburban pizza shop, and later traded gunfire on the street outside a children's hospital in the city's downtown.

Drive-by gang shootouts have also occurred in recent months in Winnipeg, Prince George, B.C., and on the Hobbema aboriginal reserve in Alberta, where a 23-month-old toddler was hit by a stray bullet.

Gang violence grips the land

Ottawa is at 10 murders so far this year! 3 shooting deaths this weekend
usually they get 5-8 a year total.