NEWS1130
NEWS1130

(With files from Renee Bernard and Kevin Macdonald) Not quite the big crowd that the Abbotsford Police Department were hoping for at a crime forum Thursday night. Only less than half the seats at the Abbotsford Arts Centre were filled.

But the people who did attend got a little lesson about what has been fueling the violence in their community over the last few months. Police Chief Bob Rich explained to the crowd that it basically comes down to two rival gangs, competing for customers in a lucrative drug trade. He says the type of violence which led to the death of innocent bystander, 74-year-old Ping Sun Ao, is a trend.

“These two groups are going at it. If we don’t find a way to interdict, it will continue.”

He says police are supressing gang activity by keeping an eye on them and letting them know they are being watched, but he says the department can’t do that forever.  He says neighbours have to respond quicker to unusual sights and sounds, and he used the night of Ao’s shooting to make a point.

“It was still light outside. This is a closed-off street, with lots of homes and people around. We got one 9-1-1 call. That’s it.”

Ao was struck by a stray bullet meant for someone in the house next door.

Rich did acknowledge that the hardest homicides to solve are gang-related homicides, because members, even if they are victims, are sworn to secrecy.

The crowd at the forum also learned what draws people into gangs.  Rich says he’s aware of teenagers who form alliances and vandalize each other’s property over pretty trivial matters. He says they are the kids that go on to join organized gangs. He relayed a story about police wanting to arrest a 15-year-old boy for assault, but whose parents refused to turn him over. Once he was finally arrested after police got a warrant for his arrest, the boy hurled profanities at the officers and urinated in his celll.

“That in itself doesn’t matter, as far as my officers were treated. They can handle that. But what is this boy’s path? What’s going to happen to a 15-year-old that treats authority that way?”

And he told the crowd despite what gangsters say, one can always leave the gang life behind.

Abbotsford Mayor Henry Braun says most of the young people in the community are wonderful, but about 100 of them have simply lost their way, and a lot of the onus falls on the parents.

“Some of these parents are afraid of their kids. Some of these kids are being bullies in the community….I’ve heard of youth having to move out of this city because they’re being bullied if they don’t conform to whoever is doing the bullying.  I would just say to parents that they intuitively know if their kids are doing something they ought not to be doing, and as hard as it may be they have to sit them down and explain to them that the road that they’re on is going to lead to death and destruction for them, and create a lot of heartache for the family members who are left.”