CPS chief addresses challenges, changes in guns and gangs violence
Posted Nov 5, 2015 5:59 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Calgary’s police chief is still calling the city a very safe place to live, but is acknowledging the challenges and changes in guns and gangs violence.
Roger Chaffin spoke to the media Thursday, just one day after a man was shot in Marlborough Park Wednesday night.
“We’re certainly seeing more and more of this propensity for gun violence and the presence of gangs, it’s an effect that big cities go through, but I want everybody rest assured that it’s something the Calgary Police Service is taking incredibly seriously,” he said.
Chaffin said the force is currently involved in five major operations regarding guns and gangs, several other in the queue and over 85 other violence-related investigations.
From the beginning of the year until October 31st, there have been 85 shootings, 12 of them fatal and 73 involving either property damage or non-fatal injuries.
In 2014 between the same time, there were 51 shootings.
“These people need to be behind bars,” Chaffin said.
Chaffin said there’s currently a reorganization of resource deployment to give him a sense of where the weaknesses are in the force.
He added there’s about 50 to 100 key perpetrators they are tracking in the city, but it’s a very fluid group.
“When you think about gang violence traditionally, you think about communities and people wearing the same jackets for instance, but these people generally are very, very fluid, they come and go, they relate differently to each other from time to time and it creates challenges for policing to get on top of it,” he said. “They can be standing beside you, in the same bar with you, in the same restaurant, you wouldn’t look at it and say hey, there’s a gang member standing there.”
“It’s their ability to adapt and sort of look like part of society that makes it very difficult.”
In 2014, Chaffin said only one homicide was related to gang problems, but this year it’s five and there’s also been an 80 per cent increase in weapons seizures.
“Shows some good work, but those are alarming numbers,” he said.
Staff Sgt. Quinn Jacques with the Guns and Gangs Unit said another change in violent activity is the escalation in how quickly members are turning to shots being fired.
“It’s relatively new that we see criminals bypass all reasonable methods of settling a dispute and it escalate right to guns and we saw it again last night and the night before,” he said. “It’s based on drugs, but there’s territorial issues, there’s issues of disrespect that lead to these incidents.”
Regarding the guns, Jacques believes they are mostly coming from western Canada break and enters, with 30 to 40 per cent coming across the border from the United States.
He also echoed the chief’s comments regarding the fluidity of the individuals they’re searching for.
“They don’t view themselves as gangsters, that’s a handle we’ve put on them, they cooperate with one another for a brief period of time and then they move on, they form other relationships,” he said. “They develop relationships with who they need for what they need and once that relationships is no longer of value to them, they move on.”
Another challenge Chaffin mentioned is the complexity of arrests due to technology and how laws have changed.
“Simple things like arresting a half a dozen people for gang violence sounds the same as what it was 10 years ago, except of the complexity to get that in court,” he said. “Everybody will have multiple phones and devices and computers with you and all those require forensic analysis as evidence-gathering and that’s with every crime that occurs in the city right now.”
Ward 5 Councillor Ray Jones said he’s been getting calls from residents wondering about their safety with the increase in violence, even though many shooting have been targeted.
He also discussed a link between the economic downturn and crime of a specific kind.
“Domestic violence is increasing at a heck of a rate and a lot of that probably has to do with people not sure whether they’re going to be, where their next meal is coming from or if they can pay their mortgage payments and I’m certain we’re getting a lot of that through domestic violence,” he said.
Chaffin said while he can’t make that connection through any scientific means, it does make sense.
“You can definitely see and feel that,” he said. “My assumption is there is a relationship between the economy and the kind of crime trends in the city right now.”
