In early 2009, a series of gang-related shootings occurred due to what police describe as a gang war in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Alleged participants include the Independent Soldiers, the Sanghera Crime Family, the Buttar Crime Family, the United Nations Gang, the Red Scorpions, and the Vancouver chapters of the Hells Angels.
Background The escalation of gang violence in Vancouver, beginning in January 2009, is alleged to have been caused by disruptions to the supply of illegal drugs resulting from the crackdown by the Mexican government against the drug cartels there, who supplied cocaine to British Columbia in return for marijuana. This reduced the profits of the Independent Soldiers (IS) and their sometime allies the United Nations gang. The IS are primarily an Indo-Canadian gang while the United Nations gang is made of a multitude of different ethnic groups. More recently, Chinese and Guatemalans and other various nationalities have been recruited. Both of these gangs' main modus operandi is gun running and smuggling marijuana known as BC Bud to the United States.
The cocaine trade became very profitable due to the ongoing Mexican drug war. The Mexican Army has severely curtailed the ability of the Mexican drug cartels to move cocaine inside the U.S. and Canada. The U.S. government says the amount of cocaine seized on U.S. soil dropped by 41 percent between early 2007 and mid-2008 and claims this is due to this pressure. The price in Vancouver has increased from $23,300 to almost $39,000 a kilo.
The cocaine trade has been the domain of the IS and UN's rival Red Scorpion street gang and the Hells Angels biker gang. As the IS and UN gangs moved in, the Red Scorpions hit back leading to an all out gang war.
The police response to the gang war was greatly hindered by the perception that the police forces in the Lower Mainland were grossly inept, which made people unwilling to come forward with information, which was the legacy of the Pickton case. The serial killer Robert Pickton had murdered 49 women, and the police failed to recognize ample evidence that Pickton was the killer in the 1990s. In March 1997, the police received a report from one woman who was bleeding badly from multiple stab wounds that Pickton had tried to murder her at his pig farm, which the police just dismissed as the ramblings of a drug addict. Likewise, another report in 1999 that Pickton had a freezer full of human flesh in his house was dismissed by the police as more ramblings from another drug addict. Pickton was finally arrested in 2002, but the way that the police had ignored the evidence that Pickton was a serial killer gave police forces in the Lower Mainland a reputation for being extremely incompetent and callous, which made ordinary people unwilling to risk their lives to come forward with information during the gang war.
Progress and escalation By the end of the first quarter of 2009, more than 20 people had been killed and 40 wounded. The Hells Angels had primarily stayed out of the fighting up to this point while the IS gang was busy trying to protect its turf from the resurgent Buttar Gang after police in April 2009 functionally dismantled the rival Sanghera Crime Group after a series of arrests which created a vacuum allowing the Buttar gang to expand its operations and encroaching on the IS for its marijuana monopoly.
Most of the wounded and killed had been members of the Red Scorpions and UN gangs who were engaged in a brutal tit-for-tat turf war. The carnage between the UN and the Red Scorpions was believed to have started with the Surrey Six massacre in October 2007. Dozens of other slayings followed, many of them retribution killings and commercial disputes between the UN and the associated members of the Red Scorpions, the Bacon brothers who used to be members of the UN gang. But the conflict between these gangs escalated dramatically after the UN gang along with the IS gang decided to move into the cocaine trade, a long domain of the Red Scorpion gang. Despite the name, the conflict actually started in late 2007. On 8 September 2007 while celebrating a birthday party at the posh Quattro on Fourth restaurant in Kitsilano, two masked gunmen marched up to the window and opened fire at the table where Gurmit Singh Dhak, the co-boss of the Dhak-Duhre group, and his 21-year-old girlfriend were sitting. Both Dhak and his girlfriend were wounded in the shooting and had to be taken to the hospital. The attack is believed to have been the work of the Independent Soldiers. Dhak was not a member of the UN gang, but the Dhak-Duhre group was allied to the UN gang.
Joushua Hedrick had a been of a Hells Angels puppet gang, known as "the Crew", in Prince George, but had moved in with his mother in Maple Ridge in an attempt to get away from the gangster lifestyle. On 11 January 2009, Hedrick vanished with his decomposing corpse being discovered in the Fraser river near Douglas island in Port Coquitlam in August 2009. On 20 January 2009, a murder attempt was made against Jamie Bacon. Bacon was driving his black Mercedes-Benz SL55 convertible on the South Fraser Way when a SUV pulled alongside him after he stopped for a red light and a group of gunmen opened fire on him. Bacon sped away, leading to a wild car chase that ended with Bacon crashing his way into a Keg restaurant. On 27 January 2009, Andrew "Drew" Cilliers, a 'respectable' and well liked businessman who also worked as a drug dealer for the Hells Angels, was shot on his driveway of his house shortly after midnight on 27 January 2009. Cilliers died on the way to the hospital.
After learning that Jonathan Bacon had moved into a condo at 651 Nootka Way in Port Moody, on 3 February 2009, the Port Moody police warned in a public statement that to associate with any of the three Bacon brothers was to put one's life in danger. The journalist Jerry Langton wrote: "Not surprisingly, the Port Moody warning didn't work. If anything, it only made the gangsta-wannabe kids in the Lower Mainland admire the Bacon Brothers even more. The boys had proved they were not just untouchable by law enforcement, but also by their enemies....Their lives were like the twisted fantasies of a bored 12-year old. The warning only put an official stamp on it". Later on the same day of the Port Moody warning, an associate of the brothers, Raphael Baldini was gunned down in Surrey as he was talking on his cellphone while sitting in his car in the parking lot of the Guildford Town Center. People in the Lower Mainland flooded social media sites with praise and tributes for Baldini. Jourdane Lal, the sister of the two Lal brothers killed in the Surrey Six massacre, praised Baldini in a public Facebook post, writing: "no words can explain how our family will miss your smilin [smiling] face, you are one of the few who truly cared, who cried tears not for us, but with us, i [I] can hope to show the same love to your family as you always showed for us, thank you for being there, they'll take care of you up there...rest peacefully my friend". The same day that Baldini was killed, 21 year-old Brianna Kinnear was shot and killed in Port Coquitlam. Kinnear had worked as a drug dealer, selling cocaine, marijuana and Oxycontin together with her boyfriend Jesse Margison and best friend Tiffany Bryan. On 6 February 2009, a Bacon brother associate, the mixed martial arts fighter Kevin LeClair, was shot in the front of the Marketplace IGA grocery store at the Thunderbird Centre and died the next day.
Nicola Cotrell, a British stripper living in Surrey who was Barzan Tilli-Choli's girlfriend, was involved in one of his murder attempts. On 13 February 2009, Cotrell texted Tilli-Choli: "I’m in love with you, I’ll do what you asked earlier. I want to spend tonight with you so I can wake up with my love on Valentines". On the night of 16 February 2009 while working at the T-Barz strip club in Surrey, she sent Tilli-Choli a text after seeing Tyler Willock of the Red Scorpions present at the bar, writing "that guy" (Willock) was present. Willock together with his friend Fraser Sunderland and a woman who remains unidentified had just gotten into a Power Rover automobile in the parking lot of the T-Barz when a group in a SUV pulled up besides them and opened, causing Sunderland to attempt to flee. The SUV followed and continued to shoot at Sunderland's car, causing Sunderland to take a bullet in his left shoulder. Sunderland was badly wounded while Willock survived unhurt.
On 16 February 2009, Nicole Marie Alemy, the wife of an UN gang member, Koshan Alemy, was gunned down in her car. As she was driving only with her 4-year-old son and the windows of her Cadillac CTS coupe were clear, it is believed that this was not a case of mistaken identity, but rather that her killers had targeted her intentionally as a way to bring grief to her husband. The murder of Alemy finally changed public opinion in the Lower Mainland and people began to supply information about the underworld. For the first time, the police phonelines for tips was overwhelmed as thousands of people called in to supply potential information about the Alemy murder. Mountie Corporal Dale Carr told the media: "We're starting to see a bit of a groundswell, if you, of people just saying, 'enough is enough, we're fed up, we're going to give a call'". Two of the callers identified themselves as long-time members of the Red Scorpions who both stated that they were disgusted by the cold-blooded execution of a mother in front of her 4-year-old son, and the information they supplied proved to be very useful to the police. On 22 February 2009, an anti-gang rally was held in Surrey's Central City Plaza, where the lead speaker was Eileen Mohan who demanded once again that the police take action to arrest those responsible for the Surrey Six massacre.
Despite the change in public opinion, the gang war continued. On 17 February 2009, the gangster Shane Messent of the Red Scorpions, in a case of mistaken identity, shot Aleem Mohammed as he was answering the door to his parents' house. Mohammed's brother, Amir Mohammed, gave chase to Messent, tackled him and took away his gun, which he then used to kill him. Aleem Mohammed survived his wound to the chest while charges were dropped against Amir Mohammed under the grounds he killed Messent in self-defense. Corey Konkin of Maple Ridge was murdered on 26 February 2009 in a case of mistaken identity, being shot in the head. On 2 March 2009, the gangster Sukhwinder Dhaliwal of Abbotsford was found murdered in his automobile in Delta with the cause of death being shot several times.
On 3 March 2009, the gangster Sunil Mall of Abbotsford, a former member of the UN gang who joined the Red Scorpions, was murdered, being found shot dead in his car. Gregor Robertson, the mayor of Vancouver, gave a speech on television, noting that Vancouver was due to host the Winter 2010 Olympics and that the violence of the gang war was ruining the image of Vancouver as the city was acquiring the dubious reputation of being a crime-infested city. Robertson stated the police were "losing the battle" and the public needed to supply more information "to turn the tide". Corporal Peter Thissen of the RCMP told the media: "I wouldn't say the area is under-policed, but certainly we could use additional resources. We're trying to engage the public because we cannot do this ourselves. This is not about more police on the street necessarily, this is about the public becoming engaged in a problem that they need to help us solve".