canada.com
Danielle Bell, Daily News;
With A File From Postmedia News
Growing gang tensions and aggressive police crackdowns may have an impact on Hells Angels in Nanaimo.
However, the criminal organization will remain entrenched in Nanaimo for years to come, says an expert on organized crime.
As gang tensions mount across the province following the deadly Kelowna shooting of Red Scorpion leader Jonathon Bacon last week, which also wounded members of the Hells Angels and Independent Soldiers, police are maintaining pressure on all major gangs in B.C. Any explosion of retaliatory violence is not expected on Vancouver Island, according to a criminologist, as police in Nanaimo continue to battle with organized crime.
At least one new gang has recently been established here as street gangs infiltrate the Island, with Nanaimo RCMP reporting more contact with organized crime groups in recent years.
First Nations street gang REDD Alert, confirmed by Nanaimo RCMP last month, has joined groups like the Red Scorpions and other gangs that have surfaced in the city, looking for a piece of the city's lucrative drug market.
A Surrey gangster linked to the Dhak criminal gang was among three men Nanaimo RCMP arrested last week after finding a cache of drugs in their car. Two brothers with ties to the violent Red Scorpions gang were arrested last year after police seized as much as $40,000 worth of crystal methamphetamine from a Nanaimo motel.
GANGS IN B.C.
? Hells Angels: Police call this a top-echelon criminal organization.
? Red Scorpions: A violent drugtrafficking criminal organization.
? United Nations: A multi-ethnic gang whose reported founder, Clay Roueche, is serving a 30-year sentence in the U.S.
? Independent Soldiers: The newest of the major street gangs, formed from mostly young South Asian men in the drug trade.
Only weeks earlier, a raid at a Lenwood Road home picked up a man whose older brother, a reputed Scorpion gang associate, is allegedly connected with the notorious gangland massacre known as the Surrey Six.
Almost any level of gang involvement is not surprising where there's a demand, said Sgt. Shinder Kirk of the gang task force.
Yet the Hells Angels, considered a top-echelon criminal organization with hundreds of chapters in more than 20 countries, has been firmly entrenched in this city for years.
Although the bikers seemingly lost its grip on the drug market it once controlled following the seizure of their clubhouse in 2007, police and experts say the Hells Angles maintains its stronghold in Nanaimo.
"They have not gone under the radar," said Nanaimo RCMP Const. Gary O'Brien. "Hells Angels have a strong presence and will maintain one in Nanaimo for many years."
Ongoing police pressure could eventually cripple most gangs in B.C., said a criminologist, but although the capacity of police to respond to gangs has greatly enhanced in recent years, they need more resources to truly rip apart organized crime.
"I would expect all of them to fall apart except for the Hells Angels," said Darryl Plecas, an RCMP University Research Chair in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of the Fraser Valley.
COMMENT
the hells angels will not fall apart because they are not a gang or organized crime they are a motorcycle club. There maybe members who get charged with crimes and some maybe convicted of them as individuals same as any other public or private organization. But to label them as an OC is just a government driven cash grab to focus on an easily identifiable predominately white group of males. Hence no ethnic or religious groups to worry about. If you profiled other racial groups like the Hells Angels are the government would not get away with it. The government likes a soft easy target to justify huge cops budgets and rights violating laws like the civil remedies act. After all the government is the original OC.
