Prince George puts its best face forward to no avail

 Front steps of the Prince George Courthouse, a source of stability in an otherwise rancorous environment

Prince George, B.C., has been busy in the crime news these past few weeks. During the last days of September two premiers (Gordon Campbell, B.C.; Ed Stelmach, Alberta) and their cabinets (10 from Alberta and 11 from B.C.) came to the city of 70,000-plus in the central interior of B.C.. That's one. The Highway of Tears with dozens of pins on the map indicating missing and murdered women, is several other stories.

A number of joint measures on crime came high on the agenda as the governments made a series of announcements. It was a positive show from the two governments and well-received according to the daily press. Then, scant days later came a double homicide in the first week of October (the 2nd and 3rd murders of the year for the city).

Victims Garett John McComb, 23, and Brittany Joan Giese, 19, were residents of Prince George. The city of Prince George had been witnessing some spectacular outbursts of violence from gangs during the months before police were called to the scene of these last two homicides.

Reports did not specify whether the two murder victims were living in the rental house on Webber Crescent, which is part of a quiet suburban area in the far west end of the city.

Police said they were called to investigate 'something amiss' at the high-priced rental property, and that turned out to be double homicide. The house was familiar to police, they said, from a raid days earlier resulting in arrests and confiscation of a cache of firearms.

Police initially refrained from discussing motive then said the murders were probably targeted and gang related.

RCMP spokesman Const. Gary Godwin told media, "Both of these individuals are known to police."

And it so happens a vehicle in the driveway of the murder scene, 2347 Webber Crescent, was a shot up Lincoln Navigator which had been riddled with bullets in a gunfight earlier this summer in the city's rough and tumble downtown.

"It appears to be a targeted double homicide. Just the scene of the crime indicates it is a murder," Godwin said. "We're familiar with this residence." The murders and shootings in the city this year have been gang-related, said Godwin.

The murders came as a bizarre aftermath to the premiers' visit which endeavored to highlight crime on the bilateral relationship between the governments, calling especially for safer communities. (It was the sixth such annual meeting between the B.C. and Alberta provincial cabinets.)

The joint cabinet meeting focused on creating safer communities. They announced the two governments will be working on a joint missing persons' database and intend to share best practices on aiding victims of crime.

"We want to make it as difficult as possible for criminals to operate in our provinces," Stelmach said. The provinces agreed to co-operate on community safety initiatives and efforts to stem in particular the rising tide of gang crime.

The provinces also intend to get tough on repeat offenders, and will launch a pilot project to expedite warrants of serious offenders that call for return to the issuing jurisdiction.

"Our two provinces are partnering to crack down on crime and focus on making communities in B.C. and Alberta safe. By working in co-operation, we can be more effective at tracking offenders and supporting victims of crime," said British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell.

The two premiers expressed concerns about the effectiveness of the criminal justice system. They said they want to work with the federal government and other provinces in a few specific areas, including the range of sentencing for all criminal offences including youth sentencing; the principles of sentencing; review of bail provisions; review of procedures for preliminary hearings; and quick action to fill legislative gaps created by the courts that hinder police investigations and prosecutions.

Premier Stelmach stressed the importance of Alberta and B.C. joining forces to make the justice system work in order for citizens to feel safe. "Crime knows no borders. Our joint efforts today will focus on making it as difficult and uncomfortable as possible for criminals to operate in our provinces while at the same time boosting our efforts to aid victims of crime."

After the premiers and their cabinets had departed, the city turned to task at hand. Reports from the city this year contained explicit details of gang warfare as Crime Watch Canada reported last month.

Police were dealing with 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 included the Independent Posse (First Nations), the Independent Soldiers (Indo-Canadians), the Renegades (a splinter group of the Hell's Angels), and others.

Thus it was that in the days preceding the double homicide in the city police were implementing a community-oriented strategy to intervene on gang developments. In fact, the RCMP organized an information session in the first week of October aimed at educating the Sikh community about criminal gangs.

What is wrong in Prince George?

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."

Haunting Highway of Tears

All the way down Highway 16 from Edmonton, Alberta, across the vast and rugged province of British Columbia to the Pacific Coast, is one of the loneliest stretches of highway on earth, and too often women who step onto it to hitchhike seem to be disappearing. The terrible losses have a peculiar Canadian twist in the overwhelming element of racism, for the vast majority of missing women is First Nation.

Police should be cooperating from Edmonton to Prince Rupert, an immense stretch of road including part called the Yellowhead. A killer or killers has shown a preference for snatching victims off lonely stretches of monumental Highway 16 into which so many have simply disappeared (Amnesty International estimates 32 women missing or victims of unsolved murder in 30 years).

In the larger picture women have disappeared from Edmonton to Prince Rupert, an accumulating number of them, and largely these are First Nation women the farther west the highway is traveled. The actual Highway of Tears is a 700 km maze of asphalt from Prince George to Prince Rupert. Relative to population, the numbers of missing women is an atrocity on the scale of the Pickton farm.

On the far western end of this highway of terror the range of age of victims might be wider, with Aielah Saric-Auger having been murdered last, and she was only 14 yrs old, and they found her at Tabor Mountain east of Prince George.

Tamara Chipman would be approaching her 25th birthday, and she is another of the most recent victims to have gone missing. The young mother, last seen hitchhiking from Prince Rupert to her home in Terrace, vanished two years ago, in the autumn of 2005. Her disappearance ignited communities along the highway into a huge publicity effort. It is startling to think someone can get away with these atrocities of senseless murder and endless grieving for relatives.

Among the missing or dead women along the highway since 1990 are Aielah Saric-Auger, 14; including Tamara Chipman, 22; Lana Derrick, 19; Ramona Wilson, 15; Delphine Nikal, 15; Roxanna Thiara, 15; Aleisha Germaine, 15; and Nicole Hoar, 25. Hoar, missing for four years, is the single non-native. Monica Ignas was 15 when she disappeared from the highway in December 1974, and 27-year-old Alberta Williams vanished on Aug. 27, 1989. Cecilia Anne Nikal, a cousin of Delphine Nikal, has been missing since 1989. This is the most accurate list released and may not be complete by any means.

Think of this: three missing women come from one tiny village in Wetsuwetin territory, next to Smithers, called the IR of Moricetown. This most picturesque location is undergoing a strangely disproportionate loss of young women. This highway killing field has become one of Canada's major unsolved mysteries, and disappearing and dying women continue to need representation to keep the light shining on their memories.

Lisa Krebs works for Carrier Sekani Family Services to create awareness about the missing women and murder victims of unsolved crimes. She is not the only one. Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy of Toronto www.sharmeenobaidfilms.com discussed the production of her film Highway of Tears, with reporter Frank Peebles, in Prince George Citizen, last Oct. '06, and Pebbles noted, the filmmaker Chinoy was, "struck by the overt bigotry she encountered in the region." The local question on so many lips, "What did these women expect?" They were living the high risk lifestyle. Well, that hardly requires an answer, because in reality not too many Canadians countenance killers stalking through society.

Chinoy asked, "Would they say the same thing if 10 or 12 local white girls were raped or murdered or disappeared on the same road?" It is impossible to argue with the reality of these murders, which reflect a terrible disregard for the safety of one particular genre of Canadian society, young Aboriginal women. When Lisa Krebs discusses the Highway of Tears she is highly adept at immediately taking the discussion to a higher level.

"Prince George is in Lheidli Tenneh," land, and as such, they hosted a symposium last Mar 30-31, at the CN Centre, "with well over 500 people," where Lisa was a registrar who knows the number that went past the desk. "It contained local government representatives, family members of missing or murdered women, provincial and federal government officials working over two days."

This extensive endeavour was broken into groups and the specific question being asked over and again is how to address the systemic cause of these missing and lost lives. It involves racism, everybody is able to agree, and poverty has a terrible role. The large scale symposium ended up releasing 33 recommendations running along the lines of four basic themes, "The final report provides clear directions for the task of preventing further losses," said Lisa.

Public awareness signs, public events like the Highway of Tears bench overlooking the Highway 16 exit to the west of Prince George, family members receiving support for efforts to preserve memories, and hope for final reconciliations, these are things the symposium endorsed and encouraged. Also, they proposed shifts in public policy, some searching for solutions to the transportation needs found in Northern B.C..

What Lisa does is a difficult form of work because it intersects the despair of dozens of people, and it will again, and again, if those dozens of people continue to suffer tremendous bouts of post traumatic stress disorder, and they will if another girl goes missing around this Highway 16 fraught with tears. The last time a girl went missing the whole territory exploded with the news of it. Meanwhile the search for missing and miscreant goes forward.

These are who are the most idenified or public of missing or slain persons at this date:

 
1. Aielah Saric-Auger: Slain and unsolved. Age 14, and a student at D.P. Todd Secondary School in Prince George. last seen by her family on Feb. 2, 2006, her body was found on Feb. 10, 2006, in a ditch along Hwy. 16 approximately 15 kilometres east of Prince George.

 
2. Tamara Chipman: Missing and unsolved. Age 22, disappeared on Sept. 21, 2005. She was last seen hitchhiking on Hwy. 16 near the Prince Rupert industrial park.

 
3. Nicole Hoar: Missing and unsolved. Age 25, from Alberta, was working in the Prince George area as a tree planter. She was last seen on June 21, 2002, hitchhiking form Prince George to Smithers on Hwy. 16.
4. Lana Derrick: Missing and unsolved. Age 19, disappeared on Oct. 7, 1995. Last seen at a gas station near Terrace (Thornhill), travelling east on Hwy 16 to her home in the Hazelton area. She was enrolled in studies at Northwest community College in Terrace.

 
5. Alisha Germaine: Slain and unsolved. Age 15, lived in Prince George, her body was found on Dec. 9, 1994.

 
6. Roxanne Thiara: Slain and unsolved. Age 15, disappeared in November, 1994, from Prince George. Her body was found just off Hwy. 16, near Burns lake.

 
7. Ramona Wilson: Slain and unsolved. Age 16, was hitchhiking to her friend's home in Smithers on June 11, 1994. Her remains were found near the Smithers Airport, along Highway 16, in April, 1995.

 
8. Delphine Nikal: Missing and unsolved. Age 16, disappeared form Smithers on June 14, 1990. She was hitchhiking east on Highway 16 from Smithers to her home in Telkwa.

 
9. Cicilla Anne Nikal: Missing and unsolved. Disappeared in 1989. Was last seen in Smithers near Hwy 16.

 
SOURCE OF DATA: HIGHWAY OF TEARS SYMPOSIUM RECOMMENDATION REPORT