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BREAKING NEWS: VANCOUVERSUN.COM | SATURDAY, JUNE 6, 2009 | ✰
WEEKEND EXTRA
The evolution of organized crime
Many criminal groups have become increasingly sophisticated, widespread — and violent
BY KIM BOLAN
VANCOUVER SUN
B
rianna Kinnear was just
22 when she was gunned
down in a borrowed truck
on the side of a Port Coquitlam
street Feb. 2.
Kevin LeClair was a little older
at 26 when he was sprayed with
automatic gunfire in a busy mall
parking lot four days later.
And Betty Yan was 39 when
she was found shot to death in a
grey Mercedes at a dark industrial Richmond strip mall April
15.
All three were targeted for
death because of their rung in
the hierarchy of one of B.C.’s 135
crime groups.
Kinnear worked on the front
lines selling drugs in a street
crew operating throughout the
Tri-Cities. LeClair was mid-level, a member of the notorious
Red Scorpion gang, who ran
more than a dozen drug lines.
And Yan was one of those rarer
hits of someone connected to
the top-echelon crime groups in
B.C., in her case the Big Circle
Boys.
With billions of dollars a year
at stake and an unprecedented
number of groups vying for territory and profits, police and
academics say there is an increasing sophistication in the
way crime groups do business
here.
At the same time, there has
been a record number of gangland slayings, most of them of
mid-level or front-line drug
dealers.
“It is still a very diverse illicit
market per se,” said Supt. Brian
Cantera, who heads the RCMP’s
regional drug section. “It has
still got the potential for huge
profits and there are those who
are fighting over those profits.
“If you take a look at the level
of violence we’ve seen, there are
a lot more gang-related homicides or mid-level drug trafficking homicides than we’ve seen
in the past,” Cantera said.
It is rare for someone like
Yan, a loan shark with tentacles deep into organized crime
groups, to be targeted. More
commonly, those sacrificed in
the war are front-line soldiers
like Kinnear or gang
members like
LeClair, possibly targeted because of his
association with
gangsters such as
Jonathan, Jarrod
and Jamie Bacon.
Cantera said it is
difficult to quantify
exactly how much money is
passing through B.C. crime
groups every year. One estimate
has pegged the province’s marijuana industry alone to be worth
$7 billion annually.
‘A need for hierarchy’
Criminologist Stephen Schneider, who has just released a
book on the history of organized
crime in Canada, says there has
been a shift in how crime groups
operate in B.C. and other
provinces.
“There has definitely been an
historic evolution in all aspects
of organized crime,” Schneider
said. “Sophistication. Power.
Wealth. Reach.
“As the groups have become
more powerful and more widespread, just like a legitimate corporation, there is a need for hierarchy. So you have seen, as the
groups evolve, increases in hierarchy.”
In B.C., that hierarchical structure looks a pyramid with
groups such as the Hells Angels,
the Mafia, the Big Circle Boys
and other Asian triads at the top.
They have long historic roots,
international connections, sophisticated structures, exclusive
memberships and are often
dealing with tens of millions of
dollars a year.
Sometimes they are directly
linked to mid-level groups such
as the Red Scorpions, the Independent Soldiers and the United
Nations — all brand-name
gangs that morphed out of
smaller groups involved in the
drug trade over the last decade.
The mid-level groups range in
size and sophistication. The UN,
for example, has about 100
members and more entrenched
indoctrination, much like the
top-level groups.
GANG
WORLD
High level:
•Top-echelon crime
groups are highly
structured with long
roots
• Exclusive membership
in organizations such as
the Hells Angels and
Asian triads
• International links
• Huge profits,sometimes laundered though
legitimate businesses
HIGH level:
1 dead
Crime groups in B.C. range from highly structured
organizations such as the Hells Angels to loosely affiliated street gangs and drug dealers.All fall into one
of three levels:low,mid and high.
Organized crime groups operating in B.C.identified by category
2003
Asian
8
Eastern European
3
Hispanic
0
Indo-Canadian
5
Independent
11
Middle Eastern
0
Outlaw Motorcycle 10
Street gangs
0
Italian
14
TOTAL
51
2004
14
6
3
10
11
7
26
1
4
2005
10
9
1
10
35
5
29
5
4
2006
17
8
0
10
42
3
36
4
4
2007
21
3
3
11
49
5
33
3
1
82
108
124
129
2008 2009
24
24
4
4
3
3
11
11
49
51
5
5
33
33
3
3
1
1
133
Mid level:
• Street-level identity,
sometimes with a name
and logo such as the UN
and Red Scorpions
• Connections to the top
groups and street crews
• Engaged in most
violence with rivals over
territory and personal
disputes,with their
street-level crews the
main victims
• Could have anywhere
from a dozen to 100
members
• Good profits often used
on luxury purchases like
cars
MID level:
4 dead
135
Source:RCMP
STREET level: 16 dead
Street level:
Graphic:Maggie Wong,
Vancouver Sun
When police raided the houses
of leader Clay Roueche last year,
they found a score sheet indicating almost $900,000 in drug
transactions. The gang bought
two aircraft to smuggle drugs
across the border, a crime to
which Roueche has pleaded
guilty in the U.S.
Roueche also boasted in
bugged conversations to having
his own contacts in Colombia
and other source countries.
The Scorpions, started in a
youth detention centre nine
years ago, number no more than
about 25, says Sgt. Shinder Kirk,
of the B.C. Integrated Gang Task
Force. Yet the Scorpions have
been linked to some of the worst
gang violence in B.C. history, including the slaughter of six people in a Surrey high-rise in October 2007.
Mid-level gangs might have an
annual cash flow ranging from a
few hundred thousand to millions of dollars.
Crews like Kinnear’s can be independent operators or tied vertically to a gang.
But as Abbotsford Police Chief
Bob Rich said last month, socalled street-level dealers get
linked by rivals to the gang with
which they do business, regardless of whether the connection is
real or perceived.
“Any young person out there
now — because of the potential
for retaliation and the confusion
that exists over who is associated with who — is at risk if they
are involved in the drug trade,”
Rich warned.
Front-line drug crews are
earning thousands to tens of
thousands a month, but are also
• More loosely structured
than above
• Smaller in number
(from three to 10 people)
• Can be independent
buying drugs from
different mid-level gangs
• Can be directly affiliated
with mid-level or even
top-level gangs
• Most likely victims of
violence, and earn the
least amount of money
the ones taking most of the risk,
whether it is of arrest or violent
underworld retaliation.
Kirk said the top-level crime
groups are deliberately insulating themselves “from not only
the general day-to-day business,
but from the dirty business.
“They still profit from the illegal activities of those at the lower level.”
The mid-level gangs “work
horizontally with other groups
at the same level, but also vertically within the triangle.”
Some of the front-line and
mid-level gangs were actually
set up by top groups, Kirk said.
“You’ve got puppet clubs that
may be newer on the scene than
some of the more recognized
puppet clubs that have been
around for a long time. So that is
more insulation and evolution
in the sense of getting someone
else to do your dirty work.”
Some mid-level groups or even
unknown “freelancers” are involved in cross-border smuggling, Kirk said, because the
profits are so high if they can
find a mode of transportation
and a route.
Activity straddles border
Last month, B.C. tow truck driver Robert Fox was arrested
near Sacramento, Calif. with $7
million worth of ecstasy and
more than $400,000 cash. He
has no criminal record here, but
is now facing serious U.S.
charges.
“There is a capacity for an individual or a group at any level to
cement international ties into
the U.S. or overseas,” Kirk said.
“You can have a subcontractor
who develops a smuggling route
and was contracting his services
out to individuals who have
product. He would then guarantee delivery or make arrangements for delivery.”
B.C. drug gangs learned from
the huge Colombian cartels of
the 1990s how to create “corporate hierarchal structures,”
Schneider said.
But the Colombians wanted to
control all aspects of the drug
deals from production to purchase to delivery, while new
crime groups hire specialists at
different stages, Kirk said.
“One of the trends in organized crime over the last 20
years has been less self-contained hierarchical groups that
work exclusively on their own
and towards incredible networking of small groups, of larger groups, of individuals, and
that’s why the problem has proliferated in that you have this cooperation,” he said.
“It is almost like you have specialization and division of
labour, where one group specializes in providing the product, the other in transporting it,
the other in marketing it at the
street level, another wholesaling
it.”
When Metro Vancouver’s Rob
Shannon was sentenced to 20
years for his role in a multimillion-dollar cross-border drug
trafficking ring linked to the
Hells Angels, Chief U.S. District
Judge Robert Lasnik did not ac-
cept the prosecution’s position
that Shannon was the overall
crime boss.
Lasnik did accept that Shannon headed the transport division of the criminal enterprise,
specializing in creative crossborder smuggling modes, and
slapped him with a 20-year sentence.
That makes sense, according
to Schneider, whose book Iced:
The Story of Organized Crime
in Canada, was recently published.
“We are seeing these very large
criminal conspiracies but again,
they are operating on a network
basis and that allows for more
fluidity, flexibility, and it also is
strategic in that if one cell or
partner gets busted, there is less
chance the police can go to another cell because the relationship is not as strong.”
The fluidity, ever-changing allegiances and networking, coupled with increasing sophistication of the schemes, makes the
job even tougher for law enforcement agencies, as well as
the courts, Schneider said.
“Our criminal justice system
now simply cannot cope with
the scope of the problem — the
level of sophistication. Our prosecutorial services are just cut to
the bone provincially and federally and they cannot take on sophisticated cases or large cases,
and that’s why you see so many
of them being plea-bargained.”
New laws called for
Police have had to strategize
and to some degree, mirror the
structure of the criminal hierarchy, having different agencies
GANG
WARS:
JUSTICE IN
OUR TIMES
A special Vancouver Sun
five-day series which looks
at the hierarchy of B.C.’s
135 crime groups.
TODAY: A guide to gang structure
in B.C.
Monday,June 8:An overview of
the gang problem in the U.S.,Mexico and Central America,and the
links to B.C.
Tuesday,June 9:How police and
prosecutors tackle gangs in B.C.
Wednesday,June 10:What our
judges do when gangsters get to
court.
Thursday,June 11: How can we
stop our children from becoming
involved in gangs?
Expert panel:Live streaming of
Justice Education Society video at
vancouversun.com,June 11,7 p.m.
tackle different levels of organized crime and gangs.
To effectively go after the highest ranks, police need legislative
changes making it easier to seize
the proceeds of crime, Cantera
said.
“What we need are laws that
make asset seizure and forfeiture of assets more easily attainable for police. That’s what we
need to protect the public. That
is at the root of the problem,”
Cantera said. “What makes the
upper echelon more vulnerable
is when they attain their assets.
That’s when they become vulnerable to law enforcement and
it has been difficult for us to be
able to get to it.”
STORY CONTINUES ON
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