One year ago, Abbotsford, B.C. was struggling to shake its two-year title as the murder capital of Canada -- a distinction it earned as the result of a vicious turf war in the Fraser Valley community.
The city put an aggressive plan into action.
A grass-roots program to raise awareness about the realities of the drug trade among students and parents was carried out, a 15-member gang squad was created and the Abbotsford police launched an intense initiative to generally make life miserable for anyone on a 180-name list of people known to be working in the drug trade.
"The primary strategy is that we want Abbotsford to be a crummy place to be a gangster," Chief Bob Rich told CTVNews.ca.
The approach worked. By the end of 2010 the community had halved its murders from a year earlier. And as of last week, Abbotsford's murder tally for 2011 was at zero -- a far cry from the 11 murders on the books in 2009.
"This year we may very well end the year without a homicide, which would be the first time in well over a decade," Rich said.
Thunder Bay takes murder capital title
But Abbotsford's success story comes as another community is grudgingly shoved into the spotlight. Thunder Bay, Ont., in the province's rugged northwest on the north shore of Lake Superior, has now earned the macabre title as Canada's murder capital.
With five murders for a population of roughly 123,000 in 2010, Thunder Bay has a murder rate of 4.2 homicides per 100,000 people, according to the most recent numbers from Statistics Canada.
Saskatoon, with a population of 227,000, follows in second place with 10 murders last year resulting in a homicide rate of 3.7 per 100,000 population.
Thunder Bay's problems, however, are far different than those that have plagued Abbotsford.
Gangs and the drug trade are irritants to the mayor and police chief, as in any major city, but they're not resulting in murders, as they have in Abbotsford.
In Thunder Bay, the problems are much less likely to make it into national headlines, said Mayor Keith Hobbs.
"We have issues with alcohol and drug use, probably one of the highest rates in Ontario and that's a big contributing factor. Most of these crimes we're seeing are alcohol related or drug related," Hobbs said in an interview.
While the problems in Abbotsford and elsewhere in B.C.'s Lower Mainland are the result of ruthless criminal gang members shooting each other in disputes over territory, Thunder Bay's problems are directly connected to drug and alcohol abuse.
People are getting drunk or high and committing violent acts against people they already know, Hobbs said.
Not 'stranger-on-victim' crimes
"In probably 99 per cent of homicides it's not stranger on victim, they usually know each other," said Hobbs, a former sergeant with the Thunder Bay Police.
"I don't consider it a dangerous city, there aren't homicidal maniacs out there killing people. But we need to address those core social issues like alcohol and drug abuse."
Thunder Bay Police Chief J.P. Levesque agreed Thunder Bay's brand of violence is a different animal than that of other major cities in Canada.
"These are not random acts of violence and not stranger-to-victim as we call them in policing," Levesque said.
"They are fuelled by alcohol and drugs in most cases... We're not seeing the random violence numbers other Canadians are seeing in their cities."
Levesque said his predecessor, former chief Bob Herman, was "ahead of the curve," compared to most police forces in Ontario. Herman created a gang unit roughly a decade ago when gang activity began to bubble over in Winnipeg, the nearest major city.
"It's not that it doesn't exist here but we've managed to suppress it to a decent degree," Levesque said in an interview.
He said police are partnering with other organizations that deliver drug treatment and harm reduction strategies in an attempt to tackle issues such as substance abuse, poverty and homelessness that contribute to the city's murder rate.
Community policing
Mayor Hobbs said he has made it a priority to look at the root causes of crime and violence in the community and said the city is considering a shift back to a "zone policing" model in order to cut the violent crime rate.
"We used to have neighbourhood policing in a big way in the city of Thunder Bay. We had neighbourhood offices in tough locations of the city, the officers got out of their cars and walked around, it was old fashioned policing," he said.
In the late 1980s that strategy reduced crime and calls for police assistance by 27 per cent in the city's rough County Park neighbourhood, Hobbs said.
"When police have a specific area they're married to, they know who the trouble makers are, they know the neighbours, they know everyone in the neighbourhood and the neighbourhood is more open to the police and they provide the police with information and vice versa," Hobbs said.
"We got away from that and we need to get back to it."
Prepared for a resurgence
Meanwhile in Abbotsford, police are pleased with the results of their gang and drug strategies, but they're taking nothing for granted.
Chief Rich said the fact two of the infamous Bacon brothers are in jail, and the third was killed in what appears to be a gang hit, has played a major role in reducing the violence that at one time included gangland-style executions in public places in broad daylight.
Jonathan was the leader of the Red Scorpion gang in Abbotsford and the Lower Mainland, along with his brothers Jarrod and Jamie, a group believed to be allied with the Hells Angels and Independent Soldiers.
Jonathan was murdered earlier this year in Kelowna. Jamie is in prison in relation to the slayings of the "Surrey Six" which included two innocent victims, while Jamie is in jail on weapons and trafficking charges.
Rich said the Bacon brothers' Red Scorpions gang is essentially defunct, and the South Asian Duhre brothers gang has now moved into the city and taken over the drug trade -- jostling for territory with the United Nations gang, which originally formed in Abbotsford in the late 1990s.
"This is very much an ongoing issue in the Lower Mainland and I'm actually expecting at some point, it may be a number of months off, that the drug war, the violence will escalate once again," Rich said.
For now, he said, police are working to make anyone suspected of being involved in a gang, or the drug trade, as uncomfortable as possible.
One simple way they do that, he said, is to visit every bar in Abbotsford, every night. If they find anyone who happens to be on their 180-person list -- and is therefore putting the public at risk with their presence and can be removed according to a new bylaw -- they eject them immediately.
"We take that very seriously because public places like that are where many of these shootings occur, so we have these people removed."
The police have also invested heavily in intelligence -- cultivating sources with connections to the gangs and drug trade.
When they hear that a hit has been ordered, the gang squad is prepared to swoop in to intervene, Rich said.
That happened recently when police got word that one gang was planning a misinformed revenge attack on another. Police stepped in quickly.
"We descended on them as they were gathering their forces and arming themselves to retaliate and we ended it. And we had the most current information coming in that allowed us to take that kind of action," Rich said.
Police, with the help of city bylaw enforcement officers, have also cracked down on suspected marijuana grow-operations and the city has passed new bylaws allowing officers to inspect suspicious properties within 24 hours of posting a notice.
But the strongest deterrent for any young person who is considering entering the drug trade or a gang, he said, is the current fate of the once-feared Bacon Brothers.
"The message we don't even have to deliver ourselves, to every young person, is pretty devastating when you think those are the three most influential drug people you've got and they're all either in jail or dead," Rich said.
Follow Andy Johnson on Twitter @AJinTO
