Thank you, Chair.
Thank you all for giving us the opportunity to appear before your committee today to speak on behalf of the Ottawa Police Service's guns and gangs unit.
With me today is Staff Sergeant Bernie Ladouceur, the staff sergeant of our criminal intelligence section, and also with us today is Sergeant Dave Lockhart, also from criminal intelligence, and Ms. Tammy Quinn, our very capable crime analyst. Staff Sergeant Ladouceur will assist in any questions specifically in regard to organized crime.
The Ottawa Police Service's guns and gangs unit grew from the youth intervention section in 2006 to combat the emerging trend of street gangs that were forming in our city to conduct the illegal or illicit crack cocaine trade and the prostituting of young, vulnerable women. The current complement of the guns and gangs section is 11 investigators, who focus their attention in two areas: criminal investigations of known street gang members and their associates, and criminal investigations into the possession, use, and trafficking of crime firearms.
A uniformed direct action response team, or DART, was formed in October 2007 as a supplement to the guns and gangs unit, with a specific mandate of monitoring gang activity while providing a highly visible and active police presence in the affected communities.
I was present at the Ottawa Police Service's headquarters, along with Chief Vern White and British Columbia's Solicitor General and Attorney General when the federal Minister of Justice, Minister Nicholson, introduced Bill C-14. In his remarks following the announcement, Chief White stated that the proposed legislation will be of value, as it raises the level of seriousness of crimes committed on our streets.
Of particular interest to our street gang investigations is the introduction of a five-year minimum sentence for shootings involving restricted or prohibited firearms or for shootings linked to a criminal organization. This, along with the increased firearm penalties brought into law a few years ago, will be an effective and welcome proposed change.
In 2008, the guns and gangs unit and direct action response team seized 66 crime guns off our streets. We are experiencing an increase in the number of criminals carrying handguns in Ottawa for intimidation and enforcement purposes and for the protection of their crack cocaine markets.
Shootings in public places are more frequent. We have had two street shootings within the past weeks, both resulting in persons being shot and both with links to street gangs and the crack cocaine trade. Just this morning we recovered a .45 calibre pistol we believe was used in one of the shootings and we took a known gang member into custody. It is investigations such as this that Bill C-14 addresses.
The automatic first-degree murder designation for homicides and the minimum five-year sentence provisions for shootings both require that the offence was committed for the benefit of, at the direction of, or in association with a criminal organization. This will place an additional burden on the police investigators to establish the accused has membership in a criminal organization, and I am quite interested in how our courts will address this. I am optimistic that the recent expert witness designations of one of our investigators in a robbery sentencing hearing will help establish this procedure. We have also achieved expert witness status recently in an Immigration and Refugee Board deportation hearing.
We are using the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada's six-point criterion for classifying a person as a gang member. This was developed in 1991 to provide a standardization across the country. The definition of “criminal organization” is stated in subsection 467.1(1). However, the criterion we are currently using is not.
A lesson we learned early on is that an effective anti-gang strategy must be intelligence-led to make the best use of resources the Ottawa Police Service has put into the guns and gangs unit. Investigations are intelligence-driven, with the bulk of the information coming from four sources: Crime Stoppers tips from the community, street checks and occurrence reports from our front-line officers, coded informants developed by the guns and gangs investigators, and of course the sharing of information and intelligence from external partners. This is why we place so much importance on a crime analysis function, and we feel we're in a good position to establish the link to street organized crime that the courts will require to invoke the proposed minimum mandatory sentencing.
The creation of the two new offences in regard to assault against police and peace officers is encouraging; however, in our view, it appears to stop short of extending protection against intimidation of officers of the court and justice officials.
We routinely face problems with intimidation and witness fear that prevent the laying of charges or cause the withdrawing of charges against gang members. We are actually seeing gang members attending court proceedings involving fellow gang members, and it certainly is having an effect on our witnesses. We have yet to have in Ottawa an instance of intimidation of a court official, but the potential is always there.
To comment on the last proposed amendment regarding section 810, peace bonds, this again addresses the fear of members of our community by giving a provincial court judge more conditions that he can impose when ordering a defendant to enter into a recognizance. Most of our persons of street gang interest appear in front of a provincial court judge not as defendants in a peace bond hearing, but rather as accused for criminal offences.
If the court sees fit to release them pending trial, the conditions placed on them are by way of an undertaking or a recognizance. These imposed conditions are quite easily enforceable, and this is where our direct action response team comes into play with regular compliance checks to ensure that the conditions are being abided by. If not, they're arrested and brought back to the courts, where we make arguments to keep them inside pending the trial date. It certainly would be of great assistance to our investigators and would minimize witness intimidation if the bail threshold were raised.
Following Justice Minister Nicholson's introduction of Bill C-14 on February 26, Chief White also remarked that it is a good beginning, but it is a beginning, and more is needed in getting criminals off our streets. The key is lawful access reform, lawful access being the term used to describe the legal process by which police can intercept private communication. Police need a replacement of that outdated 1974 legislation, which would provide us with intercept capability for new communications systems that the service providers are now offering the public. We also would like to see better rules and regulations governing our ability to obtain subscriber information. At the investigative level, Staff Sergeant Ladouceur and I are all too familiar with the restrictions placed on ongoing investigations and projects, not to mention the prohibitive costs.
I have talked a lot on enforcement and little on prevention and diversion. The Ottawa Police Service is committed to an anti-gang strategy based on the four pillars of community education, intervention diversion, enforcement, and targeted suppression. However, when dealing with criminal organizations and their involvement in the illicit drug trade and increased willingness to carry and use firearms, a firm hand is necessary.
In my view, Bill C-14 will meet the objectives of denunciation and deterrence to violent crimes committed in connection with organized crime and street gangs.
Thank you.