Justice Committee on Oct. 23rd, 2009

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

First of all, do you have here a problem with organized crime involving legal businesses, for example in construction, where people seek to launder money from the drug trade?

Secondly, in this same area, are there players who seek to discourage honest business people from tendering submissions and winning contracts for their company?

This is quite an important phenomenon in the Montreal area, and I was wondering if it had spread as far as here.

[Supt Brian Brennan]

To date we don't have any investigations in the Atlantic region specific to the example posed in your question.

Our challenge here in the Atlantic region is dealing with what we normally refer to as traditional organized crime from other parts of the country, because they're using our coastline and our international ports as a gateway to move commodity in. The majority of those traditional crime groups' activities, in terms of money laundering, getting involved with corporations or businesses and that type of thing, tend to take place where they're physically located, central Canada, etc. We're not seeing that same phenomenon here.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Unless I am mistaken, street gangs are also one of the major problems, here as elsewhere, and you sit on committees with community representatives as you seek ways to prevent young people from joining street gangs. I see that you are nodding yes.

How do you go about doing this here? Do you sit only on committees with representatives from ethnic communities? When I was studying in Halifax, in the Navy, I knew that there was indeed a very poor community in a certain area. Or else do you simply meet with the social leaders of these communities? Do you in fact have agents, as it is the case in Montreal, who walk up and down the street trying to establish a relationship with young people in order to intervene before they gravitate to street gangs?

[Chief Frank A. Beazley]

This one will take a little more time. I hope you don't mind.

The Halifax regional municipality, unfortunately, has a number of distinct areas throughout its community that would be considered communities at risk. We have a number of public housing initiatives--I believe seven--throughout the region. There's also what they call “affordable housing” areas, and certain blocks in the region have a large number of those. There are areas where there's long-time poverty, race, literacy, and schooling problems.

Several years ago there was a figure floating around HRM that in the African Nova Scotian community the average grade level was grade 9. When you have people who have been isolated and put into these public housing units dealing with all the things that most of us don't deal with every day, you also eventually start to get crime. People are naturally going to want the same things that everybody else has.

In 2004, as I said in my opening remarks, we were called the most violent city per capita in Canada by Statistics Canada. We changed our approach to policing in HRM at that time--a fairly dramatic approach. I met with who I thought at the time were the key ministers of the provincial government with whom I wanted to create partnerships. They included Justice, African Nova Scotian Affairs, community development, and the community resources ministry. They have a great deal of influence in the areas I was talking about.

We did an analysis of crime in HRM. The crime is not like in most cities; it's not everywhere. There are pockets of crime. People call them “hot spot” policing, but there are areas within the region that have a very high ratio of crime. We have found in our studies that 56% of all street robberies, for example, were being committed by African Nova Scotian youth.

Another thing that was shocking in our studies was that in our provincial detention centre for young offenders, over 30% of the population was African Nova Scotian youth, and 12% of the federal population is African Nova Scotian young adults. We talk a lot about youth, but young adults are very heavily involved. When I say “young adults”, that's between 15 and 27 years of age. Again, there is a very high population of African Nova Scotians.

Our strategy had to change. The first thing we did was create a committee called Safer and Stronger Communities, made up of Justice and Community Services. They supplied me with offices in the high-crime neighbourhoods, and I moved police staff into the highest-crime neighbourhoods. We would meet regularly and talk about the issues within housing.

Some of these communities were so violent we couldn't even get the Salvation Army to come in. We couldn't get other social services to come in. Taxi drivers in the city would drop people off with their groceries two blocks away from these areas and make these women with their kids walk in with their groceries. It was getting that bad at that point in time.

We did move in. We created a partnership with the provincial government, and we worked very closely with them. We're expanding that partnership with them today. Of the seven public housing areas in this region today, I now have six offices in six of the regions. I put what I call community response officers in those offices, and their jobs are not only to do policing; they do policing, but they're working with all the social agencies, education, the schools. We're holding regular meetings with housing, health, and education. We're working toward taking these children and trying to turn them another way, or at least giving them an opportunity.

For instance, in one unit we were in, we put in $200,000 and cleaned up the community. People ask me if it works. In the beginning they had 75 vacant houses within this one particular community. Today there's a waiting list to get in there. We've dropped crime in some areas of the city by 60-odd percent.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Chief, could you perhaps wind it up, please?

[Chief Frank A. Beazley]

Okay.

We've also added beats in the higher-crime areas. We now have foot patrols throughout the city in the higher-crime areas. Where we're going through the public safety officer is to continue to expand our partnerships, try to get a federal component into our partnerships, and we believe it is working.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

If I could make a suggestion...

If they had something on paper regarding these programs, I would ask that they provide it to us.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

I was just going to say that there are some issues that do require a longer response, and unfortunately the question was asked just before the time was up. I do want to allow enough leeway to actually get answers out that are going to be helpful to our deliberations, so that's why sometimes we'll allow these answers to go on for a while. I'm going to use my discretion. I want to be fair to everybody.

Chief, if you could provide us with a written summary on the issue you've just addressed, it would be very helpful.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Okay. We're going to move to Mr. Comartin--for seven minutes, I hope.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for being here. It was really interesting. I'm from Windsor, Ontario, right across the river, less than a kilometre, from what was the murder capital of the United States for a good number of years. We had a good deal of spillover from that, and when it got particularly bad, in the 1980s, our chief did exactly the same thing you've done in moving units into some of the high-crime areas. It's been extremely successful. It's kind of ironic: the front page of our newspaper this week had one of the ones who was right in the core area of the city talking about the significant success they've had along the same lines as what you've described. I'm just giving you that to encourage you to keep doing it, because it does work. We've been working on it for about 20 or 25 years now.

With regard to the structure here--Superintendent Brennan, you may be able to help with this--is there any indication of a connection with any of the U.S. gangs, all the way down, I guess, as far as Boston? Is there any international connection you've been able to identify?

[Supt Brian Brennan]

Not specifically to identify gangs from the United States. We have had organized crime files that have reached into the states to individuals, but not specifically to any identified gang.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Okay. We saw this when we were in Vancouver. We know, from evidence we've taken in front of the committee and other things, that they've done it in Alberta. I know they do it in Ontario, and we heard yesterday they do it in Quebec. Quebec, in particular, was quite insistent about the need for special prosecutors assigned specifically to fight organized crime, to prosecute those files, because of the added expertise and experience that's required.

Is there a special prosecutor in the Atlantic region?

[Supt Brian Brennan]

Not specifically, as there is in other jurisdictions. The federal Department of Justice provides the prosecutors, but from within that they provide us with experts or experienced prosecutors in that area. I would say that special prosecutors are needed in terms of the large, complex investigations, just as the police need specialized subject matter experts and well-trained members to carry on those investigations. So to continue that expertise, it should flow into the judicial system as well.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Chief, I don't know if you know, but is it being contemplated? I guess what we've seen elsewhere is that you get to a certain stage where organized crime has infiltrated into society to the degree where you have so many files that you're at the stage where you need to move additional expertise into play. Is that being contemplated even at this point for the region?

[Chief Frank A. Beazley]

I don't believe so—

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

I'm sorry, Chief, can I interrupt you? I'm anticipating one of the problems might be that you almost have to do this province by province. I may be wrong on this, but I'm assuming the prosecutors don't move across provincial lines here, so you'd have to have several of them if you were going to do it. But it's not being contemplated at this point as far as you know?

[Chief Frank A. Beazley]

There was an initiative. There was a local prosecutor who was trained specifically to deal with outlaw motorcycle gangs a number of years ago. But he's moved on and is now a judge, and I haven't seen anything new, though as my colleague says, they will assign to very difficult investigations—the local crown prosecutors will give us a prosecutor to work with us.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

It will be on that specific....

[Chief Frank A. Beazley]

It will be on that specific case.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Just going back to the interconnection here, I'm going to ask about the heroin seizure.

You left us with the impression, both in your notes and in what you said verbally, that it was Ontario based. They were the ones who were charged. Was there any connection in terms of a small local gang being involved in helping the passage through? Was there any identification?

[David Aggett]

I don't want to speak specifically about that particular case because some of this is before the courts.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

I understand.

[David Aggett]

However, we commonly see connections between local small groups and these large shipments. They're acting as consultants, for example, because they know the local area, or they aid in logistics for some of these other organizations.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Aggett, in terms of that—and this may almost sound dumb—what's the financial relationship? Have you been able to identify that, not specifically in that case, but generally?