Metro Vancouver gangs 'loaded' with informants: police
BY RAFE ARNOTT, ABBOTSFORD TIMESJANUARY 12, 2010 COMMENTS (31)
Organized crime in the Lower Mainland is rotting from the inside out, according to police and a gang expert.
University of the Fraser Valley criminology professor Darryl Plecas said that a lack of loyalty in criminal gangs, along with the focus of police resources on organized criminal activity in the Lower Mainland, is turning members into informants.
"[Intelligence gathering] has a domino effect . . . informants in those gangs, [they're] just loaded with them," said Plecas. "We're going to see more and more people getting busted."
Describing 2010 as "the year of arrests," Plecas said that in the next couple of months "you're going to see a flood of arrests on gangs. People are going to [fall] like dominoes."
He said it's significant because the people going down in gangs are in the top rungs of the hierarchy, and used the arrest and sentencing of UN gang founder Clay Roueche as an example.
"When you start knocking off people at the top, and they start getting the kinds of penalties they deserve, like in the case of [Roueche], that can only be good news," said Plecas.
"He will never see daylight."
Plecas says five or 10 years ago the police had no capacity to make deals with criminals for information about competing gangs.
"None whatsoever," he said, adding that suspects would most likely say "Screw you," to police when questioned.
"[But], they won't be saying that anymore."
Const. Ian MacDonald with the Abbotsford Police said arrests create instability in gangs, and forces criminal organizations to recruit people that "are less known, less loyal and less familiar."
Citing former members of gangs like the Red Scorpions as examples of high-profile gangsters turned informants, MacDonald said gang loyalty isn't what it used to be.
"At the end of the day, despite being part of a group, these individuals will always look out for themselves first."
Opening up the gang rank-and-file, said MacDonald, puts the criminal franchises in vulnerable positions because any time knowledge is shared within an organization it can be used against it.
"When you create a situation where half your gangsters are informants it's got to collapse, because all they have to go on is trust," said Plecas.
"It's so desperate that people are saying 'there's so many people I can't trust in gangs, who can I go to?' And that circle is shrinking," he said.
Reluctant to frame the spiraling number of informants as a "mass exodus," Sgt. Shinder Kirk with the RCMP's Integrated Gang Task Force said police are seeing more people coming forward with information on gang activity.
"People of varied backgrounds, people who've been involved with crime, people involved on the periphery of groups that may decide they want to leave that lifestyle.
"We always hold out an opportunity for anyone to come forward who has information that can help law enforcement."
Kirk echoed both Plecas' and MacDonald's sentiments that police are seeing high-profile successes in the war on gangs in the Lower Mainland, and that gang loyalties at the mid, and street levels are dynamic.
"They're still allies one minute and enemies the next," he said.
Plecas said gangsters spilling information publicly about other criminals is surprising to him because, "All they're doing is more likely to get themselves killed . . . because they see themselves locked into a corner."
He added that even with cash strapped limited resources police may be able to drive down crime to half what it was, and then they can devote even more attention to organized crime.
"It will get harder, and harder, and harder [for gangs] to do business," he said.
Police want to cultivate an atmosphere of paranoia, said Kirk.
"It may not only be someone [gangsters] call an associate or a friend, it can be anyone who may turn them in.
"That's the environment I want to create . . . you're not safe anywhere."
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