Chilliwack Progress Article

May 15, 2007

Gang Violence under Fire at RCMP Centre

The RCMP training centre in Chilliwack is helping keep gang violence and other kinds of international crime at bay far from Canada*s shores.

While 25 prosecutors from Central America and Mexico learned RCMP crime-fighting techniques during an intensive five-week course at the centre, they also passed along invaluable information to B.C.*s task force on gangs.

And the training program is just the start of similar partnerships aimed at stemming the tide of international crime.

*Don*t wait for (the gangs) to come here before you start to fight them,* Alvaro Matus, Guatemala*s chief prosecutor, warned Friday.

He likened the prevention of gang-related crime in Canada to stopping a cancer or the birth of an evil child.

*Once it*s born, it*s too late,* he said. *It*s going to reproduce itself. It*s going to grow and then it will be out of control.*

Superintendent John Robin, head of B.C.*s Integrated Gang Task Force, said gangs are not seen here to the level seen in the U.S., but there are disturbing signs.

*We*re not seeing them yet, to the point they*re seeing them in the U.S.,* he said. *(But) what we see is a lot of similarities in the way organized crime in Central America and Mexico is structured.*

Asked if there are links between the gangs and Hells Angels in B.C., he replied, *the short answer is yes* and the Angels are *near the top* of the organized crime structure.

But the difference *is the level of violence which is occurring in Central America and to some extent in Mexico,* he said. Prosecutors in Guatemala, El Salvador, and the Honduras *experience more (gang violence) in a month than most of us in a career.*

Rick Craig, executive director of the B.C. Law Courts Education Society, said prosecutors in those countries must often deal with 10 to 15 murders a day.

Guatemala reports 6,000 gang-related homicides a year and the Honduras 3,000.

He said *people are afraid to get on the buses* in Guatemala because gang members commandeer them to rob passengers or demand a *war tax* from the drivers.

The prosecutors at the RCMP centre frankly admitted to reporters on Friday that they fear for their lives each day they go to work.

*Every time we go out on a job, we commend ourselves to God,* said Honduran prosecutor Ricardo Castro. *We know our work is dangerous.*

Said Guatemalan prosecutor Erik Maltez: *There will be a fear ... at the same time we try to carry out our work trying to conquer our fears. We*re trying to build a better country, which is our job.*

He said the training received at the centre has given him *knowledge (that) allows us to have a better vision, to be able to fight the problems we have in our country.*

The fear that gang members have created among the people is one of the biggest problems that crime-fighters face.

*We have to consider these gang members are people who are completely heartless,* said Matus. *They have no values, no morality, no respect for life. They like to go around instilling fear in people ...and make people believe, if they report what*s going on, they will be victims.*

*As a result of this fear, people don*t take action,* he said. *They don*t go to the authorities.*

Ironically, the prosecutors said the gang members learned their trade in the U.S. before they were deported back to their home countries, which were either impoverished or torn by civil war. In those conditions, they flourished.

The two main gangs are the Mara Salvatrucha 13 and the 18th Street gang, which can be identified by their tattoos or the graffiti used to mark their territory.

El Salvadoran prosecutor Juan Ramirez said MS 13 gang leaders *tell each of the new gang members they have 13 days to kill someone ... or they will be killed. That*s why the crime rate has gone up very much because they are killing people without any better reason than that.*

A growing number of young people join the gangs to escape the grinding poverty, which is tearing apart the families that form the base of society, he said.

*We are not relatively poor; we are very poor,* he said. *This results in families falling apart.*

Mexican prosecutor Jorge Castellano said his country is free of gangs.

However, he added, *we have the problem of drug trafficking cartels with the U.S.* which often shelter gang *refugees* from Central America and use them for *small jobs* in their criminal activities.

The prosecutors, unlike those in Canada, form the front line of crime-fighting in Mexico and Central America. They investigate the crime scenes and execute the search warrants, not the police.

*When we are carrying out search warrants looking for drugs or weapons ... some of my colleagues have been killed as a result,* said Castellano.

What the prosecutors learned at the training centre are new ways to process crime scenes and organize investigations *which will allow us to unite as a team* to arrest and convict the gang members, said Maltez. In Guatemala only two per cent of all reported crimes result in charges, and convictions are expected to be even lower.

Said Honduran prosecutor Castro: *I think when we arrive back in Honduras, we will be able to trust to God first and the justice (system) and they will help us ... reach convictions for a lot of these criminals.*

Chief Superintendent Bill Dingwall, officer in charge of the Pacific Region Training Centre, said that police officers here also *learned a great deal* from the prosecutors during the training course, which will *better prepare all of us for gangs.*

The training centre, which former Chilliwack mayor John Les lobbied hard to bring here following the closure of CFB Chilliwack, has a hotel, dining facilities, classrooms, and lecture theatres equipped for language translation.

Dingwall said the centre is now being sought out by other countries for similar training programs.

*Because of the experience we have, the sophistication of our techniques and training, we*re sought out as a place to come and learn,* he said. *Believe me, every penny we invest into this training is returned to us tenfold in the exchange of knowledge and experience that goes on during class.*