Children stay indoors to avoid Surrey street shootings
VANCOUVER — Normally, there are a handful of kids riding their bikes or playing soccer outside Karn Dhillon’s house on 88A Avenue in Surrey, the quickly growing suburb south of Vancouver.
But ever since gunfire erupted early Sunday morning — leaving a 22-year-old man dead in the hospital — they’ve been kept indoors.
“Parents don’t want to risk their kids’ lives,” said Dhillon, 16, who lives a couple doors down from where the shooting took place. “You never know when a car’s going to drive by another car and they start shooting at each other.”
More than seven years after having a front-row seat to this province’s worst gangland slaying, the so-called “Surrey Six” massacre, residents here are once again gripped by fear. Since March 9, there have been 22 shootings in Surrey or neighbouring North Delta — last Sunday’s was the single fatal one.
Police say there is an important distinction between the current spate of violence and what took place between 2007 and 2009.
Whereas the previous violence was played out between bona fide gangsters who were at or near the top of the pyramid, the current violence is being played out between lower-level drug dealers who may have several degrees of separation from an actual gang. So far, 14 of the 22 shooting cases have been linked to a turf war between young drug traffickers from the South Asian and Somali communities.
But being at the bottom of the pyramid doesn’t mean less risk to the public. The current violence is far more spontaneous and indiscriminate, unlike the carefully planned and targeted hits from the past involving the likes of the Red Scorpions and United Nations gangs, said Sgt. Lindsey Houghton, spokesman for the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, B.C.’s anti-gang agency.
“These are late-teen, youngadult drug dealers who drive around in cars with multiple cellphones, taking calls day and night and delivering drugs like they would pizza to whoever … for 10, 20, 40, 50 bucks a delivery,” he said.
These front line workers are also the most exposed and vulnerable to violence, he said.
“These groups and young people are driving around looking for each other. They’re almost instantaneous crimes of opportunity. When they see people from the other side, the guns come out and they start shooting. It could be 3 o’clock in the afternoon in a busy intersection or 3 a.m. in the morning when no one else is around.”
What’s not helping is that the victims or intended victims of the recent shootings have been unco-operative with police, telling investigators that the bullets aimed at them somehow “fell from the sky” or that there’s “no need” for cops to intervene and they will “take care of it myself.”
The lack of co-operation has prompted authorities to take the unusual step of releasing their names and photos in the hopes that family or friends will come forward with information.
Sandokh Nagra, who lives about 100 yards away from where Sunday’s shooting took place, agrees that families play a vital role.
“Only their family members can pursue them. They must tell to the police when they’re doing wrong. They must report,” he said.
Dozens of new RCMP officers are being added to Surrey’s police force, a move that is “welcome and long overdue,” said a recent column published in the Surrey Leader newspaper. “Police visibility is badly needed in many parts of Surrey.”
Last October, Kash Heed, B.C.’s former solicitor general, suggested that B.C. should follow the lead of Los Angeles and create an anti-gang czar to co-ordinate a strategy to deal with the province’s gang problem.
Others are trying to tackle the problem from the prevention and interdiction side. One program is called Surrey Wraparound, a partnership between the city, police and school district. It aims to help youth who are either just getting started in the gang life or already deeply embedded in it.
There are 60 youth enrolled in the program — referred by family, friends, teachers and others — and the average age is 14, said Rob Rai, the district’s manager of safe schools. Typically, those who become drawn to gangs, he said, are unsupervised, feeling somewhat lost and hang around with those who are bad influences.