POLICE UNVEIL ANTI-GANG MEASURES

Initiatives Include Volunteer Citizens, Quick-Response Team and Plate
Speedreader

Vancouver police are promising that 100 new sets of eyes and ears
will be monitoring the streets in the new year for gang activity --
though they won't belong to trained, armed officers, but rather to
volunteer citizens.

The number of Citizens' Crime Watch volunteers will be doubled, and
participants will be provided for the first time with licence-plate
numbers from known gangsters' cars. They will be asked to call police
if they spot those vehicles outside certain restaurants and bars.

"The volunteers will create an invisible net around high-profile gang
hangouts and report to police when they spot a licence plate from the
list," Chief Const. Jim Chu said.

Police announced a handful of new anti-gang initiatives Thursday,
less than a week after 10 people were shot on Oak Street in what
police described as a "personal attack" on the city.

No update on the high-profile investigation was offered Thursday,
except that three more of the victims have been released from
hospital, leaving five -- three men and two women -- still being
treated for gunshot wounds.

Deputy Chief Const. Warren Lemcke admitted the Best Neighbours
restaurant outside which the shooting spree happened had not been on
the department's radar screen before last weekend, but insisted,
"With 100 extra eyes and ears out there ... and with participation of
restaurant owners and bar owners ... we have a much better chance of
preventing things from happening."

A second initiative announced Thursday was the creation of a "gang
quick-response team," a group of dedicated officers who will target
gangsters with checks on the streets, and in restaurants and bars.

The members of this new team -- Lemcke would not say exactly how many
officers will be involved -- will decide whom to target and where
based on police intelligence, and also on tips from citizen
crime-prevention groups such as Restaurant Watch, Bar Watch and
Citizens' Crime Watch.

The new unit will augment the VPD's existing gang-related teams, such
as the firearms interdiction team and a squad that works on the
weekends in the entertainment district.

A third initiative, Lemcke said, is the expanded use of a device
called an Automatic Licence Plate Reader, which can scan thousands of
plates and identify ones owned by gangsters. The device will now be
deployed at impaired driving roadblocks and other "strategic locations."

Insp. Brad Desmarais, head of the VPD's gang and drugs section, said
the licence-plate readers "will give us an unparalleled opportunity
to track these people moving through our city and identify areas
where they congregate. We may not know that there is some
hole-in-the-wall restaurant on Main Street where these guys decided
to set up shop."

Const. Oscar Alvarez, who is in charge of the decades-old citizens'
group, said the gang file is a new area of focus for the volunteers,
who in the past have been involved in initiatives such as patrolling
for stolen cars and suspicious activities.

The group has 117 volunteers, but Alvarez says more than 100 people
are on a waiting list to join.

He has now been given funding to expedite the security clearance,
interviews and selection process so new recruits will be in place in
the first few months of 2011.

Volunteers would, for privacy reasons, only be given basic
information about what to watch for outside gang hangouts, such as a
colour of a vehicle and its licence-plate number, but not its owner's name.

Alvarez maintained it will not put these unarmed volunteers at risk
by asking them to monitor gangsters, despite the escalating gang
violence in the city.

Volunteers will be anonymous and will work in teams out of private
cars, and when they see a gangster's licence plate they will phone
police -- not approach the target on their own.

"They will not get out of their vehicles," Alvarez said. "Anonymity
is the key to this."

However, Prof. Robert Gordon, head of Simon Fraser University's
criminology department and a former RCMP officer, cautioned gangsters
are more dangerous than common property offenders, and said most of
them "are not stupid."

"Is there a risk? Yes. I think there is a risk with any citizen
patrol situation, but when you are dealing with these guys the risks
are higher," he said.

Gordon was unconvinced the new measures would curb the region-wide
gang activity, which is fuelled by the lucrative drug trade.

"I think it's optics and I don't see it as really making a dent in
the main problem," he said. "I think it is indicative of the level of
desperation there is at the moment in the city on how to handle this
outburst from folks in drug trade."

But, Desmarais said, police are excited about these new measures.