Middle-class gang violence in B.C. deadlier than ever, police report
Ex-gang member says guns and high stakes of drugs mean ‘there’s no rock bottom anymore — it’s a grave”
VANCOUVER — Police officer Keiron McConnell had been on the job four months when a call crackled over the radio about a stolen vehicle.
The driver was arrested after a short chase, but when McConnell was told the young man was a gang member, it shattered his understanding of what that meant.
“This young fellow lived on the west side of Vancouver, mom and dad still lived in the house, they were wealthy by 1990s standards, his siblings were successful in school. So it was like, what is it about this kid that got him involved?”
The question plagued McConnell as he watched the pattern of seemingly privileged, middle-class young men choosing a life of crime repeat itself. About 15 years later, while pursuing a PhD, he explored what makes British Columbia’s landscape so unlike any other.
Established wisdom, he found, aligned with the stereotypes he’d carried into the job. Traditional gang members in cities like Chicago are young men born into poor neighbourhoods without any options — a rational response to irrational circumstances. That’s not always the case in British Columbia.
“In B.C., gangs are, generally speaking, an irrational response to rational circumstances,” he said.
Violent new stakes
Joe Calendino was lying on a prison floor, emaciated and sick from drug withdrawal symptoms when he says he hit rock bottom.
He was a member of the Hells Angels’ infamous Nomads chapter when he was busted selling $10 worth of crack cocaine to an undercover cop.
It was the moment he began turning his life around, which he says was possible because the outlaw motorcycle club was ready to cut him loose.
But the gang landscape has shifted so dramatically in the 10 years since then that today’s youth won’t have the same second chance, Calendino said.
“There’s no rock bottom anymore — it’s a grave,” he said.
Calendino now works with youth in gang prevention and intervention through his non-profit Yo Bro Yo Girl Youth Initiative. The organization offers programming in classrooms, after school and during school breaks that aim to keep kids busy, active and empowered with support from positive role models to choose a healthier life path.
When he looks back on his early entry into criminal life, beginning with drugs in Grade 8 and high school fights with other kids, he said the stakes were different than those facing the kids today.
“We didn’t go around shooting each other. We got into fights, a man or boy got beat up and it was over, it was done. You may have fought someone 10 to 15 times but you never ever thought of picking up a gun and going to shoot him,” he said.
For McConnell, today’s middleclass gangsters aren’t too different from the young man from west Vancouver he arrested in the 1990s.
Two years ago, he was speaking with a “wealthy” father of two young men at risk of violence.
“I pleaded with him to use his wealth to get his kids out of the country and he didn’t. And his one son was shot and killed in Surrey and at the same time, his other son was shot five times.”
‘Easy money’
Officials say many of the middleclass young men stepping off school and career paths to pursue criminal businesses see it as a legitimate career opportunity.
They begin working low level “diala-dope” lines, where users can order drugs by phone for delivery or meet up, with the promise of growth.
It’s the entry point into a much more complex organizational structure. A 2018 report by an anti-gang task force in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey found many gangsters are profit driven and operate enterprises similar to traditional businesses. Gangs in B.C. are more sophisticated than in other parts of Canada and some even require new members to pay for training, it says. Their product, primarily, is drugs. Historically, British Columbia’s “porous” ports, with no dedicated patrolling force, made it an attractive hub for the international trade, Gordon said. And its temperate climate allowed it to become a major producer of marijuana, for which a thriving black market persists despite legalization last October.
Newer products — fentanyl and its analogues — present an even more lucrative business opportunity. The concentrated painkillers are cheap to produce in China and even easier to transport than other drugs, since they can be ordered on the dark web and sent by regular mail.