Since then, the team has pulled over gangsters in 2,334 cars, some multiple times, and seized 20 guns, Robinson told reporters on the last day of the Western Canada Gang Conference.The street-level uniformed team has also made 34 arrests, laid 52 charges and seized five sets of body armour since its formation Nov. 14.But more important, Robinson said, are the 1,234 "high-value intelligence reports" the team has developed. These aid beat cops in the areas where gangsters party.
"It is highly successful," said Robinson, who heads the team. "The highest priority we have as a police community in Canada right now is the gang problem."Metro Vancouver has been plagued by gangland slayings in recent months, many of them unsolved. Brazen shootings have taken place in restaurants, outside nightclubs and on busy streets.Robinson said the benefit of the conference, which brought together 560 investigators from across Canada, was the sharing of intelligence and policing strategies, particularly because of the fluidity of gangs.Supt. John Robin, head of the B.C. Integrated Gang Task Force, said most of the 129 gangs operating in the province have shifted demographically. They have become multi-ethnic.
Robin confirmed that police here have seen several cases in which members of violent Central American gangs, like the Mara Salvatrucha 13, have settled in B.C. and become involved in criminal activity.The Vancouver Sun revealed this week that a refugee claimant living in Surrey, Jose Francisco Cardoza Quinteros, admitted to the Canada Border Service Agency after arriving last September that he had been a member of MS-13, killed at least four people and was present for the beheading of a woman by a member of his gang.Robin said police were aware of Quinteros' presence in the community.He said most of the MS-13 members who have shown up in B.C. are not working together as a group here."What we are seeing is individual gang members that are tied back and have ties back to gangs in the United States, gangs in Central America that are involved in criminal activity in Canada," Robin said.
Robin said investigators work closely with the CBSA to share intelligence about the cross-border movements of suspected gangsters and criminals like those in the Mara Salvatrucha.He said he was pleased gang specialists from Honduras and Guatemala attended this week's conference and shared their strategies with police here, as well as intelligence about gang members, who number more than 150,000 in that region and are trickling into Canada."It has been a growing trend over the last number of years," Robin said of the notorious gangsters showing up in B.C.
"We want to make sure that it doesn't develop into a huge significant problem here in Canada. We have enough problems with gang violence as it is."
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