Thank you.
I'm Bob Stewart. I've been with the Vancouver Police Department for the last 32 years. I'm presently in charge of our criminal intelligence section.
The VPD, through its own efforts and those of the provincial criminal intelligence network, has identified a number of organized gangs and crime groups operating within the region, including the city of Vancouver. Many of these groups have recently become high profile in the media and, due to the level of violence they are currently demonstrating on our streets, present a threat to the safety of our communities.
The financial rewards associated with the prolific illegal drug trade are currently the catalyst for the formation of these organized crime groups. The subsequent violence is typically the result of drug turf wars, drug rip-offs, and unpaid drug debts. However, many of these individuals are involved in other aspects of criminal activity. These activities include, but are not limited to, gun smuggling, extortion, robbery, credit card fraud, identity theft, mortgage fraud, money laundering, counterfeit goods, and vehicle crimes such as VIN-swapping.
Some groups have demonstrated a high level of sophistication with the use of encrypted communication technology to develop and maintain their criminal networks and to transmit information nationally and internationally. As this activity continues to proceed unchecked, the groups become more organized and entrenched, presenting an even bigger challenge to law enforcement.
In support of enforcement efforts to dismantle, disarm, and deter these groups from their criminal and violent activity, the VPD has seconded officers to many of the integrated police units you've heard about today.
In fulfilling our local mandate to provide safety for the citizens of Vancouver, being funded mainly at the municipal level, the VPD focuses its organized crime enforcement efforts on those individuals or groups that have demonstrated the highest propensity for violence and pose a serious drain on our local policing resources due to their violent street-level activity.
The VPD is committed to investigating all aspects of group criminality. To this end, we endeavour to use creative enforcement techniques and all the tools provided by the Criminal Code and other statutes to sustain enforcement actions on key members of organizations to stem the wave of violence and create instability within the groups.
As a result of a recent project that targeted one of the most violent crime groups operating in Vancouver, the VPD has laid more than 175 charges against 25 people. In addition to offences related to drug enforcement, the charges resulted from incidents ranging from causing a disturbance to violence, assaults, and murder. Of the charges, 75% were directly related to weapons offences and resulted in the seizure of 25 to 30 firearms. A direct positive impact on public safety as a result of this project is the significant decline in shootings over the last six months in the southeast area of Vancouver, where the group carried out its criminal enterprise.
A practice that has proven to work well with criminal gang prosecutions is access to the regional gang prosecutor. Although the potential of this highly effective close working relationship with crown counsel has yet to be fully appreciated in relation to gang crime, the investigative and prosecutorial efficiencies realized by the assignment of a dedicated prosecutor cannot be overstated. Investigations tend to remain focused, while appropriate charges are laid and warrants are executed in a timely manner.
Police and crown counsel, both federal and provincial, need to be encouraged to continue to develop strategies to increase their joint effectiveness. Furthermore, federal and provincial prosecutors need to continue to develop working relationships that aim to address jurisdictional issues and consolidate prosecutions so that judges at trial can fully appreciate an offender's scope of criminality and the subsequent negative effect of that activity on the overall community.
In addition, employing a dedicated prosecutor who is completely familiar with a particular file facilitates an appropriate and compelling disclosure of information at bail hearings. This should be considered as a best practice, so that violent individual offenders of a crime group may be arrested and charged in a timely fashion and held in custody at bail without potentially revealing information that may jeopardize an ongoing larger investigation.
Persons who are in a heightened state of violent criminal activity need to be arrested, charged, incarcerated, and then held in custody in order to provide a sense of relief to the community and increase public safety. An example of this successful model as it relates to property crime is the Vancouver Police Department's chronic offender program and the identity theft task force. Dedicated provincial crown prosecutors come on board early in the investigative stage and help set an efficient agenda and direction to bring the file to an early conclusion. In the course of the charge approval process, the same prosecutor consolidates charges on the accused from throughout the region and then presents at the bail hearing and sentencing. We have realized detention orders and guilty pleas in over 90% of the cases as a result, and the community gets a break from the negative impact of a prolific property offender.
I have one last point. There's another area of the criminal justice system that I believe requires some further review, and that's parole. One could argue that the public would agree in many cases that sentences handed down by the courts are deemed appropriate. But what is often of greater concern is the application of the parole process. Offenders may serve only one sixth to one third of their sentence time in an institution, while the remainder of their sentence is served in the community.
This may not be the right forum to discuss parole. I appreciate that the issue is very complex. However, one could argue that as a result of the parole policy, there is not significant enough deterrence to the commission of crime.
Thank you.