By Cheryl Jahn

Lower Mainland gangs moving up

Mar 13, 2024 | 3:07 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – As Council heard Monday night, gangs from the Lower Mainland are making their presence known in our city.

“The game is still the same. The players might be different and the new group is coming up,” says Inspector Darin Rappel with the Prince George RCMP. “But a bigger trend, though, is how open they are about it. You do enforcement action, you execute a search warrant. And within short order, somebody else from the same group is up here in no time.”

The news was particularly unsettling for Council, but gang activity is not new to our city.

“Remember back to 2009, 2010, we had a shooting downtown,” says Councillor Garth Frizzell. “We were named the most dangerous city in Canada. And the gangs were real trouble then. And the RCMP focused significant attention on it and then brought that down and more under control. Now we see it’s it’s on the rise again. As the superintendent said, it’s time to buckle down.”

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Last week, Prince George’s RCMP Street crew unit announced it had led multiple investigations targeting individuals and groups involved in trafficking drugs. Search warrants were executed in various residents throughout the city, resulting in substantial seizures of illicit and prescription drugs, as well as cash.

“Well, we made national news with what the drug bust that happened here,” says Frizzell. “So the fact that that a bust happened means that resources are on the ground and they’re doing the work that they need to be doing. So we’ve got to thank the RCMP for the hard work that’s being done. But there’s a lot ahead of us.”

What concerns law enforcement is the sheer blatancy with which the gangs operate. Untouchable? “I wouldn’t speculate as to that. I just think certainly it’s lucrative and a day you’re not selling drugs is a day you’re not making money and huge amounts of money.”