What is happening in Prince George, B.C., might be the biggest question circulating from the dark corners of British Columbia society this year
Last fall Crime Watch Canada reported that Prince George had the highest crime rate in B.C.. We did not report the countless occurrences of gang violence that erupted since then into warfare, simply because they did not occur.
What a difference a year makes, accompanied by a failing forestry economy and falling demand for pulp and paper. These mainstays of the province's economy are not doing well.
Today reports from Prince George contain explicit details of gang warfare including drive-by shootings, kidnappings for drug debt, and a peculiar localized propensity for snipping fingers off crack users who fall into debt (fingers are lost for as little as $200 worth of crack cocaine).
The gangs participating in Prince George include the Independent Posse (First Nations), the Independent Soldiers (Indo-Canadians), the Renegades (a splinter group of the Hell's Angels), and others.
Prince George is the hub city in the north of B.C., and the population is sitting around 75,000. It has a large percent of First Nations in the population, for example, over 25 percent of the School District 57 enrolment is First Nation.
It is not as if Prince George is the only place with big problems in drugs and organized crime. Tiny little Alert Bay at the north end of Vancouver Island recently featured a cocaine bust worth $17,000.
In light of the rampant spread of cocaine use in small-town B.C. and elsewhere in Canada the recent report on organized crime in 2008 released from the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada came as no surprise.
First of all, Prince George ranks fourth in the nation for its violent crime problems (behind Regina, Saskatoon, and Winnipeg. Officer Lesley Dix, of the Prince George RCMP, said, "A rise in criminal activity is due to organized crime."
The CISC report supports the officer's contention, according to Sgt. Tim Shields, spokesperson for the service, "In British Columbia the illicit marihuana industry alone is estimated at $6 billion per year," who spoke at a news conference Aug 22 08.
He added, "The figure does not include revenue from the sale of crystal meth, cocaine, and heroin," nor the long list of other illegal activities associated with organized crime.
It is these billions of dollars and the associated activities that have people running for cover in the streets of Prince George.
The news reports in the city itself paint a grim picture, one title stating, "The streets of downtown Prince George seem to be getting tougher, according to police and some business owners," said Officer Dix.
An anonymous business owner told the local daily newspaper, "The street scum have actually warned me I was pissing in the wind by resisting. I've had three break-ins in a month and I've been taunted by the thieves telling me what they took."
They added, "You're paving the road to hell and the best pavement is within four square blocks all in the downtown. Crack and meth will turn a child into a prostitute in a snap. Don't you want to deal with that?"
Officer Dix said the RCMP have been "confronting the issue head-on," and said she agrees, "the criminal element has been getting bolder and meaner in recent times. I believe we have experienced a rise in some criminal activity involving organized crime," she said.
"What comes with organized crime is the drug trade, and that leads to violent assaults and attempts on people's lives when they run into disputes within that world, but it sometimes happens in public places and the public can be at risk. We have seen with more and more frequency that individuals who belong to organized crime tend to carry weapons."
She discussed the conflict revolving around two main groups and said it is spilling into the public, and some drinking establishments have an open door policy, "anyone and everyone is welcome, even knowing they are involved in organized crime," said Dix.
She noted "They, therefore, put the rest of their patrons at risk. The public does not know when a dispute is going to take place. When there is a concentration of organized crime members in one area, there is a higher risk of violence occurring."
A former resident of the city who got badly beaten for stepping between the gangs earlier this year said, "They control the bars downtown, and if you cross the street in that city today you risk infringing somebody's territory."
The primary site of most of the gang problems is the downtown core of the city, a place that has a 20 year history of decline and failing redevelopment. The former resident said, "They are preparing the turf for the future. The city will only get larger and people want to control that is coming."
