Police chief warns gangs still a threat
Arrests just a start in a possible long legal journey
Charges against five men in six gang-related Calgary killings is a milestone in a long-running war between two criminal factions, but police and prosecutors still have a long legal journey ahead.
With the arrests this week in an investigation code-named Desino — Latin for “desist” — authorities have now laid charges or secured convictions in eight of the 25 homicides with known connections to the conflict between FOB and the FOB Killers.
The violence stretches back to 2002, but police Chief Rick Hanson vowed investigators will keep up their efforts to crack the unsolved cases that remain.
“We will continue to be relentless, as it pertains to any crime they committed,” Hanson said Friday.
Operation Desino resulted in murder and organized-crime-related charges against five FOB figures in connection with three killings that took place at the gang war’s height, in 2008 and 2009.
The shootings in public have waned, but the violence flared as recently as April, when someone stabbed and nearly killed veteran FOB member Nicholas Chan.
Chan, 35, is now charged in connection with all three cases involved in the Desino investigation: the killing of Kevin Anaya, who was shot in front of a home in Marlborough in Aug. 2008; the shooting of Kevin Ses and Tina Kong at a northeast Calgary restaurant in Oct. 2008; and the triple homicide of FK member Sanjeev Mann, cocaine dealer Aaron Bendle and bystander Keni Su’a at the Bolsa Restaurant on Jan. 1, 2009.
Despite that blow to FOB and the recent arrest of FK member Bill Ly in connection with the attack on Chan, Hanson said the gangs pose a continued threat.
“Just because you don’t see the overt signs of gang violence like a few years ago, it’s not because this has gone away. It’s because we have been putting in a huge amount of effort into suppression,” he said.
“It’s not because everybody has turned into a wonderful individual and all these guys are going to church.”
Police and prosecutors also have considerable work to do in the courts. Two of the three men originally convicted of murder in the Bolsa shootings, Nathan Zuccherato and Michael Roberto, had their convictions set aside by the Alberta Court of Appeal and are awaiting new trials. The third man, Real Christian Honorio, has also appealed his murder convictions.
Organized crime charges laid in the Desino investigation will add another dimension to two of the murders involved in that case.
Chan has been charged with firstdegree murder and instructing a criminal organization in connection with Anaya’s killing.
One of the new suspects in the Bolsa killings, Dustin Duke Darby, 30, has been charged with first-degree murder and participation in a criminal organization.
Proving the suspects’ involvement in a criminal organization will be dependant on proving FOB is one.
The Criminal Code defines a criminal organization as a group of three or more people whose main purpose or main activity is committing crimes for the material or financial benefit of the group or any of its members.
The Supreme Court of Canada handed down a decision last year that said how a criminal group is structured can vary from case to case — but proving its existence involves demonstrating some degree of organization and longevity.
“Structure and continuity are still important features that differentiate criminal organizations from other groups of offenders who sometimes act in concert,” the court wrote in R. v. Venneri.
Mount Royal University criminologist Doug King said that test isn’t insurmountable considering FOB’s long, documented history.
“They’ve been around for 10 (or more) years now,” King said.
“There will have to be evidence of that organization. It will have to be more than opinion and police supposition.”