Are we doing enough, and can we do enough?
Those are the two questions facing British Columbia’s politicians and law enforcement leaders as the extortion spree continues with no end in sight.
By the end of January, the number of extortion-related threats, mostly against South Asian-Canadian business owners, was already into the dozens. There had been more than a half a dozen shootings since the start of the year. Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke had called for Ottawa to declare a state of emergency.
Are we doing enough? No.
Can we do enough?
Probably not, at least not with the legal and policing tools we have right now.
Here in B.C., we’ve been through a series of criminal and crime-related crises during the last 20 years. From ongoing gang warfare, to money laundering in casinos, to deaths by fentanyl, to multi-million dollar frauds, we’ve seen that our police and courts simply do not have the capacity to respond to novel or highly complex criminal crises.
Earlier this month, the head of the B.C. Extortion Task Force, RCMP Asst. Commissioner John Brewer, got his knuckles rapped by Premier David Eby over this statement:
“A crisis is what’s happening out there with drug overdoses,” Brewer said. “That’s a crisis. People are dying.”
First, if we don’t stop the extortions, people are definitely going to die. Someone will be shot, whether an innocent target, or a random bystander.
Second, two crises can be occurring at the same time.
The problem is that we’ve responded badly to both of them.
There are many signs that our justice system is not up to the many jobs it has to handle.
Homicide investigations and trials take years, sometimes more than a decade, especially in the case of complex gang-related investigations.
There is a massive backlog of cellphones and computers seized in criminal cases sitting in RCMP labs, potentially containing useful evidence.
Some criminal suspects are going free, all charges dropped, because their rights to a swift trial are being violated so badly that judges have no choice.
This is not simply a matter of increasing police budgets. More cops on the beat won’t necessarily help with these huge, systemic issues and trans-national criminal situations.
What this province and Canada need is more highly skilled, technically proficient investigators. We need more forensic accounting and electronic expertise supporting those investigators. We need legal and diplomatic support for investigations that will inevitably cross borders – whether that’s for extortion, money laundering, drugs, child exploitation, or complex financial fraud.
Building the capacity to deal with the extortion crisis is a necessity. And it’s vital that we maintain any expertise, budgets, and forensic support we build up, because there will always be another crisis.
– M.C.