It's been a busy two months for Surrey's criminal element—and local law enforcement is just beginning to catch up.Since March 9, Surrey RCMP say they've responded to 30 shootings, half of them connected to a street-level drug turf war. This week police arrested five dudes and laid hefty firearm and drug trafficking charges against three of them. The cops have seized 13 weapons, 21 vehicles, and $23,730 in the ongoing investigation.When I last spoke to Mani Amar, filmmaker behind a critical Metro Vancouver gang documentary, nobody had died in the months-long shooting spree. After an April 19 shootout killed the 22-year-old nephew of a Surrey MLA, I asked him if he still thought these were low-level, wannabe gangsters."It's still street-level and very unorganized," Amar says of the 13 to 20 young guys still out there trying to make a name for themselves in Surrey's criminal underworld via drive-bys in broad daylight. Street-level or not, Amar worries the "tit-for-tat" attacks could escalate in coming months if the suspects' neighbours, friends, and families don't come forward and cooperate with police."It's the bravado mentality," Amar says of the retaliation threat. He sets this up with a handy NFL football metaphor: "One of their guys is down. He's done. He's not going to be playing anymore, so what's the other team going to do?"If the Patriots just scored, now the Seahawks have to score."Needless to say, this has been a tough battle for police. Cops went so far as to release names of a dozen suspects—most hail from middle-class, second-generation South Asian immigrant families—and still witnesses, neighbours, and extended families have kept relatively quiet. Wounded victims have been especially uncooperative.When Arun Paul Singh Bains died in the street, his family and politician uncle both claimed he wasn't a gangster or a criminal. Amar doesn't go so far as to call bullshit, but he says he's skeptical. "You can claim to be ignorant, but that's still irresponsible parenting." Amar gets why his community is protective of their own, but says it's ultimately a mistake."The best thing to do as a community and for parents is to get law enforcement involved." Otherwise, he says, "it's just going to get worse and worse from here." Violent crime in the city is already up 40 percent over last year, though Amar says it's still a far cry from the levels seen during Metro Vancouver's gang war in 2009-10.Bains' high-profile death seems to be turning the tides in police favour. The RCMP set up a 24-hour tip line after his murder, and recent arrests seem to suggest people are finally starting to call in. "Arun's death proves—this stuff only ends in death or jail."Beyond the scare of "shots fired" three times a week, the conflict has unintended consequences, like kicking up racist sentiment in the region. He says local media repeatedly fail to mention two white kids have been named by police, yet often inexplicably fixate on the one kid of Somalian descent. This turns the public conversation to blaming perceived outsiders, rather than finding solutions.Even Surrey Mayor Linda Hepner jumped on the blame bandwagon. She got in trouble last month for telling reporters "I'm not the sheriff." Amar says this is not a good look for a leader, saying everyone should take some sheriffing responsibility. "Gang violence, racism, they're all societal issues that affect everybody," he says. And often these issues migrate from one marginalized group to the next.This trend fits with his study of Metro Vancouver gangs through the decades, where first and second generation immigrant kids use violence to "climb" the organized crime ladder. "Certain communities go through certain issues at certain times," he says.For example, he says young Chinese-Canadians moved up through street-level crime in the 1980s. "Richmond was a bloodbath," he recalls. Now Amar sees Chinese Triads are the crime bosses in town. "It's never just one community's issue."Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.
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