Last week police from jurisdictions across Manitoba and in British Columbia concluded a year long operation directed at members of the Hell’s Angels and their affiliate criminal organization, the Zig-Zag Crew.
The work of 300 police officers resulted in the arrest of more than 30 suspected gang members. The operation, called Project Divide, centered on an informant who spent the year gathering evidence against the gang members that police and prosecutors will use in trying to obtain convictions against the suspected gang members.
Police operations as large as Project Divide are very difficult to perform. But, as police have proven, they can be done when they have the resources. Fighting organized gangs and street gangs takes a concerted full-time effort. Project Divide is proof that police can do the work, but if it is not followed-up by continuous enforcement, other gangs will quickly step up and fill the void of drug dealing and illegal gun peddling created by the arrests and the associated violence will continue.
Shortly after the arrests from Project Divide were announced, representatives from the Winnipeg Police Association noted that it was important to fund police officers for an anti-gang unit so that the unit could work full-time. After all, gangs are operating full-time selling drugs, peddling illegal firearms and acting violently so it’s important that the anti-gang unit is also operating full-time. Without that continuous and aggressive push on gang activity, operations like Project Divide only have a very short-term impact.
The tragic reminder of that came only a few days after the Project Divide arrests when a shooting left two teenagers dead at a house party. The 16 year old charged in the shooting had a long history of crime and gang connections and had repeatedly violated the probation orders that had been placed upon him. Having a full-time anti-gang unit and people in place to ensure probation orders are actually enforced would reinforce operations like Project Divide and would keep new gang members from quickly resuming gang activity.
Project Divide proved again that police do a tremendous job of impacting gangs when they have the resources to do that job. But the violent events of the weekend also show that it is going to take more than a coordinated sting operation once every couple of years to make a long-term impact on gangs.
The approach taken by the NDP government toward gangs is to run television ads and hand out pamphlets to try to convince gang members to leave the gangs. Ultimately, without police resources to take those gang members dedicated to the criminal lifestyle off of the street, no other programs are going to reach their full potential.
