Columns: Crime Is The Community’s Fault?

By Mike Archer, Editor. Dan Malo, the superintendent in charge of the B.C. Integrated Gang Task Force (IGTF), told the Abbotsford News this week that, “Community is the newest key weapon in combatting (sic) the spiral of gang and gun violence in the Fraser Valley and Metro Vancouver.”

“The main message here is the community needs to be mad and intolerant of people in this lifestyle”, he said in the story, adding, “They need to make clear they no longer wish to have these people in their community, and that they don’t want their dirty money.”

Brilliant.

So the nice people of Abbotsford need to explain to the gangsters that they’re not wanted. The community needs to be mad and intolerant.

Much like the police advice to the business people and store owners of Coquitlam several weeks ago that they ought to refuse to serve gangsters, this new initiative once again shifts the blame to the community, the schools, the courts … anyone other than the people with the guns, the tasers and the authority to deal with these guys.

If there was any doubt that policing is a PR exercise it has now been removed by Super Malo.

It really has nothing to do with the fact that the police have spent the last 20 years standing by helpless as, first the Hell’s and then the UN Gang, and the Red Scorpions have moved into the Lower Mainland to satisfy the insatiable demand by the community for a natural plant the Supreme Court of BC says ought to be legal.

It all comes down to the fact that you and I aren’t exerting enough social pressure on gangsters and storeowners aren’t kicking them out of their establishments.

What nonsense.

Who does Super Malo think he’s kidding? If all the nice people of Abbotsford and all the coffee shop and store owners got together and told the gangsters they’re not wanted in these parts … what would happen?

The nice middle class families who are buying marijuana and pumping more cash into the BC economy than the forest industry aren’t about to tell the gangsters they aren’t welcome. The nice middle class families buying dope would much prefer to obey the law, but as long as they are forced to buy from folks like the Bacon brothers, there will always be Bacon brothers to fill the demand.

While Super Malo’s PR skills are undoubtedly one of the talents that got him his job, we really wish he would level with the people of the community rather than pass the buck.