Gangs Trending On Younger Recruits

By 250 News

Prince George, B.C. - Sergeant Shinder Kirk does not call himself an expert on the gangs in B.C. because, he says, they're too fluid and dynamic...

And in displaying two long columns listing B.C. gangs on-screen at this past week's anti-gang summit, the spokesperson for the Uniformed Gang Task Force urged those in attendance not to worry about remembering the names, saying many would break into splinter groups in the next couple of days.

But Sergeant Kirk says there are two on the list he's particularly interested in:  the Unknown Soldiers and the Cartel Soldiers.  "Those are groups of kids in high school."

Kirk says, "The Unknown Soldiers have actually developed a tie, through an adult, to the Red Scorpions, and everybody has heard of the Red Scorpions (the gang believed to be responsible for the slaughter of six people in Surrey)."

He says the Cartel Soldiers were actually formed in youth detention centre.  "And they have written plans on how they're going to expand throughout northern B.C. through the jail system," says Kirk.  "They were actually trying to get transferred to various youth facilities throughout the province, recruit within those centres and when they got released, they were going to go into those communities and become an entity or gang themselves."

Kirk says while gangs in metro Vancouver have evolved and become much more sophisticated, many of the gangs elsewhere in B.C. and in the prairie provinces tend to emulate the Bloods and Crips in the U.S. -- they wear colours and have bandanas, hand signs and signature graffiti.  The UGTF Sergeant says, "And, one of the trends we have, if they've adopted this American ideology, is, of course, recruiting younger and younger people."

"And they can be as young as 10 years of age, simply because it becomes a culture, it becomes almost automatic to bring your younger siblings into it, but also to recruit neighbourhood kids."

Kirk points to Abbotsford as an example, he showed the Prince George crowd a slide with four young men on it -- two were in their late teen's or early 20s, one was saving for college and both were involved in the drug trade.  They were both kidnapped and murdered.  The other two young men were 17, high school students, and also involved in drug trade activity.  They, too, had been kidnapped and murdered.

The Task Force spokesperson says young people only see the drugs as leading to big money and the opportunity to buy fancy cars and live the good life, they don't see the down side.

He says, "This is a business that has no rules, no morals, no ethics and bottom line, there is no loyalty.  If you have it in your community, you need to come together and look for collective and collaborative solutions to deal with it from all levels."

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