South Asian gang crime in Canada

Dan Ferguson:

Everyone was having a good time until the fight began and someone started shooting.

When a 29-year-old Surrey man exchanged insults with four young Indo-Canadian men at Garry T’s pub at 72 Avenue and Scott Road, the confrontation escalated and one of the Indo-Canadians produced a handgun and started shooting, inflicting multiple wounds – one of them fatal.

The Dec. 8, 2005 incident is just one of many in Surrey and other Lower Mainland communities where a gunfight has erupted in a public place, with bullets being sprayed indiscriminately with no concern for innocent bystanders.

According to police, the number of shooting incidents nearly doubled last year, fuelled by a “bad boy” mentality that sees young men with no criminal past packing handguns to bolster a tough-guy image.

As a result, disputes that would have ended in a fistfight or an exchange of insults are turning into potentially fatal encounters.

When police find the men responsible for such incidents, there is a good chance that they won’t have adult or youth criminal records, RCMP Staff Sgt. John Ward says.

“It’s the bad boy image. It’s young men who are in this lifestyle.”

Handguns were used in eight of 17 confirmed homicides in Surrey last year, including the May 13 murder of 30-year-old Dean Mohamed Elshamy, who died in a hail of gunfire at a Mac’s store across the street from Garry T’s.

Elshamy did not have a criminal record.

Ward says the number of shooting incidents has risen noticeably in the Lower Mainland, but he cannot provide precise figures for Surrey.

Vancouver p olice statistics, however, suggest the rate of shooting incidents has roughly doubled from the previous year.

Most of the gunplay is happening in the South Asian community, according to the Integrated Gang Task Force (IGTF).

A summary report, “Responses to gang violence,” indicates the task force is concentrating on gang activity within South Asian groups “due to (their) high profile and level of violence.”

The gang task force was revived in 2004 at the urging of Indo-Canadian community leaders, seven months after it was quietly wound down.

While the first task force was created to co-ordinate work between different police agencies on a small number of existing gang cases, the new force can launch its own investigations.

The IGTF has 60 full-time police officers and 13 civilian staff from all municipal departments and RCMP detachments in the Lower Mainland.

In its report, the IGTF says the loosely knit criminal groups that function within the South Asian community are smaller and far more chaotic than traditional gangs.

They are “unstructured organizations” with fewer participants than traditional gangs “... networked along family lines and neighbourhoods (with) alliances frequently developed from school,” the report states.

“Criminal relationships (in South Asian gangs) are fluid – allies one minute, enemies the next.”

The report cites statistics showing there has been an increase in significant incidents in gang-related violent acts, with over 80 homicides between 1994 and 2005 “related to Indo-Canadian gang violence.”

Kidnapping offences have more than doubled since 1999, from 150 to 360 in 2004.

“The majority of crimes are opportunistic – extortion, kidnapping, drug ‘rips,’ drug smuggling, homicides and violent acts.”

In a perverse way, the report suggests, the bad boys with the guns still adhere to traditional Sikh values of “image, status, reputation and respect.”

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