Justice committee  Sir, I could maybe better answer that at the level I am with the Ottawa police. Cellphones are key. When we arrest somebody we're amazed at the number of times the cellphone is going off in the short period that we have it. On bail release conditions, recognizance, and undertakin

Justice committee  Absolutely, we are.

Justice committee  Our section has been up for a few years now, and we just recently achieved expert witness status in court as gang experts. One of our detectives, Detective O'Brien, was there in January giving evidence at a sentencing hearing. It is a process, and it's a fairly new process for

Justice committee  The first criterion is that a reliable source of information says that a person is a gang member. Second, a police officer observes a person associating with a known gang member or members. Third, a person acknowledges gang membership. Fourth, a person is involved directly or ind

Justice committee  I had that discussion with some of the criminal investigators in our guns and gang section this morning, and I know the Criminal Code does have a definition of “organized crime”, because I looked it up this morning as well. The discussion was around whether or not that would be i

Justice committee  Sir, I missed that part after “10%” . The gang members do what?

Justice committee  We do have a dedicated crown attorney here in Ottawa to prosecute our gang cases. I was recently in Toronto, where they have an office of in excess of 50 dedicated crown attorneys. So that's a direction we're going in. My own opinion for why they may not go to trial is that it'

Justice committee  If I may add, sir, my experience with it--

Justice committee  I can speak from my experience here in the city of Ottawa, with a population of a little over 800,000. It is an urban problem we're having with street gangs. We are not seeing that type of activity in the rural areas. Our experience is that those involved in the illicit crack tra

Justice committee  At my level I certainly don't work with it daily. I've had discussions with Staff Sergeant Ladouceur and Sergeant Lockhart, who are more specialized in that area. My understanding of it—and certainly Staff Sergeant Ladouceur will step in to help out—is the fact that the service p

Justice committee  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,