CFSEU-BC Targets Gang Activity with Partners across B.C. Leading to Arrests and Seizures
In the first quarter of 2023, the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit of British Columbia (CFSEU-BC) led a multi-city initiative to reduce opportunities for gang violence in collaboration with the Langley, Burnaby, Coquitlam, Nanaimo, Campbell River, and Prince George RCMP Detachments as well as municipal police departments in both Vancouver and Victoria (VPD and VicPD). The intent of the multi-week initiative was to mitigate, disrupt, and suppress violent activity through proactive, overt enforcement on identified individuals who pose a significant threat to public safety.
Working with our partners in the Lower Mainland, Island, and North regions, uniform-based gang patrols were deployed to high-risk places at key times in order to disrupt firearm violence and interdict illegal weapons and commodities. Using both current intelligence and historical trends to inform strategic deployment, CFSEU-BC’s Uniform Gang Enforcement Team (UGET) focused on geographic “hot spots” and prominent individuals that pose a threat to public safety due to their gang nexus.
CFSEU-BC’s UGET worked with officers and analysts from the partner agencies to supplement their respective suppression efforts with the goal to target violent gang-related activity using proactive enforcement, including support from the Real Time Intelligence Centre-BC and RCMP E Division Air Services.
Throughout this initiative, CFSEU-BC’s UGET seized the following:
• Approximately 2 kg of illicit drugs (e.g., cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl, heroin etc.)
• Approximately 16 pounds of non-government issued cannabis products
• 5 firearms, assorted ammunition, and body armor (plus 9 other types of firearms – e.g. airsoft rifles, one modified to project arrows)
• An assortment of 80 weapons (e.g., knives, brass knuckles, Billy clubs, loaded heavy gloves, Tasers, axe, extendable baton, bear spray etc.)
• Approximately $70,000 CDN cash
• 2 vehicles related to ongoing investigations
• 11 impounded vehicles in relation to a number of investigations
• Approximately $80,000 worth of recovered stolen property from several cities, including designer watches and a high-end SUV.
Over 260 files were generated across the cities that resulted in a number of arrests and potential criminal charges in relation to ongoing investigations. The initiative also enabled the collection of key gang intelligence tied to multiple high-level crime groups and to several referrals to CFSEU-BC’s Gang Intervention and Exiting TeamCFSEU-BC’s Gang Intervention and Exiting Team (GIET), both of which will likely produce future positive outcomes.
Outside of this specific multi-city initiative, these types of proactive deployments garner significant results that contribute to overall public safety in communities throughout the province. Please refer to the following links for more information regarding an additional UGET and South East District joint effort:
Our communities can expect to see CFSEU-BC’s UGET officers travelling extensively throughout the summer engaging with gang and high risk behaviour individuals that threaten public safety. This includes, numerous scheduled ride events by Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs (OMC’s) and their associates. Members of OMC’s are often connected to street gangs, drug dealing and significant violence.
“The BC RCMP is committed to working closely with CFSEU-BC and other policing partners to combat organized crime in our province,” said Superintendent Jim Elliott, Acting Deputy Criminal Operations Officer for the BC RCMP. “This joint operation is a perfect example of how collaboration can lead to significant disruptions to organized crime groups.”
“A significant part of CFSEU-BC’s strategy to prevent, disrupt, and suppress the activities of gang members is to utilize our Uniform Gang Enforcement Team to proactively target those who pose the highest risk to public safety and to support and enhance the efforts of our law enforcement partners,” says Superintendent Alison Laurin, CFSEU-BC’s Deputy Operations Support Officer. “Every time high visibility gang enforcement officers from CFSEU-BC and our partner agencies initiate contact with those engaged in activities that put us all at risk, it deters and prevents gang violence and also sends a message to them that police agencies are working together.”
Media Spokesperson: Sgt. Brenda Winpenny
Desk: (778) 290- 4677
Cell: (604) 838-6800
