Surrey gangs aiming to recruit children
Mounties share details with reporters in wake of two deadly shootings
VANCOUVER— Children as young as 10 are being groomed for recruitment by gangs in Surrey, Mounties told reporters at a press conference to address gang crime in the city.
Surrey has been in the grip of gang violence with shootings happening on a regular basis and Mayor Linda Hepner said she’s been rattled by the situation of children being recruited.
“It scares the daylights out of me,” Hepner said. “I look at my grandchildren and I think how impressionable young people can be.”
The media conference was held on the heels of a deadly month for the city, during which two Surrey teens — 16year-old Jaskarn Singh Jhutty and 17-year-old Jaskaran Singh Bhangal — and Surrey resident Paul Bennett, 47, were shot and killed in two separate incidents.
Following the shooting deaths of Jhutty and Bhangal last month, more than a thousand people staged a rally close to Surrey city hall to call for renewed action from police, poli- ticians and community members to save Surrey’s children.
RCMP assistant commissioner Dwayne McDonald confirmed the attempts to recruit young children by gangs and stressed if intervention doesn’t happen quickly those being groomed by gangs are harder to steer out of the lifestyle.
“We’ve learned that if we don’t start reaching children in elementary school years … if we wait until the time that they're in junior high or in the middleteens it might be too late,” McDonald said.
Hepner lamented the recent deaths in her opening remarks on the city’s latest strategies to combat gang violence.
“I want to acknowledge the collective pain our community has suffered in the last few weeks,” Hepner told the crowd. “Lives have been lost and families have been destroyed and the entire community mourns for the loss of these victims of violence.”
While ramped-up enforcement is one of the recommendations from the mayor’s task force on gang violence, Hepner said prevention and intervention for Surrey’s youth are also central to her city’s anti-gang strategy.
Programs targeted at specific demographics — such as gender and ethnicity — and specific neighbourhoods are being rolled out in the hopes of reaching youth who are feeling the pull of gang life. Assistant commissioner McDonald told reporters he was confident new funding from the provincial government and fresh strategies from the mayor’s task force would help his officers make Surrey safer.
“Since 2014, since we have had quite a substantial increase in resources in the detachment with respect to RCMP officers ... we have seen, by-and-large, a decrease in our shots fired, and in our violent crime,” he said. “We want to continue that. We want to not take our foot off the gas.”
RCMP statistics confirm 100 new officers were added to the Surrey detachment in 2015, after a request from Mayor Hepner was approved by the provincial and federal governments.
McDonald did not identify the names of the gangs involved in Surrey’s ongoing violence, nor did he specify how many officers belong to the Surrey RCMP’s gang enforcement unit, which is set to double in size to align with recommendations from the mayor’s task force.
He did say the officers in the specialized unit were drawn from within the Surrey detachment, having been personally approved by him for the purpose of engaging in anti-gang enforcement activity. According to the RCMP’s most recent annual report, 819 officers belong to the Surrey detachment, making it the largest in Canada.
B.C. Public Safety Minister and Solicitor General Mike Farnworth announced $1.12 million in additional funding would be granted by the province for the Expect Respect and a Safe Education (ERASE) antibullying program, designed to “address the circumstances that lead to gang involvement.”
Farnworth told reporters he found the age at which B.C. kids were being targeted for gang involvement “shocking,” but said he was hopeful all levels of government working in unison could make a difference — a point he said politicians heard loud and clear at the rally in Surrey following the slaying of Jhutty and Bhangal in early June.
“This is an issue that’s not going to be solved by a single level of government,” he said. “And I think the recent rally has helped to drive that message home.”