Are Young Pot Dealers Behind the Latest Surrey Shooting Spree?

I wrote this sentence precisely one year ago this week: If you haven't heard, it's "shots fired" season in Surrey, BC.

Today I can't help repeating myself. Just like in 2015, Metro Vancouver's annual cherry blossom explosion has been closely followed by a rash of drive-by shootings. So far in 2016 there's been 30 incidents, which is more shootings than the first three months of last year. The latest was a car-vs-car shootout along 88th Avenue and 132nd Street in Surrey early Sunday evening. The night before, a guy was taken to hospital with serious injuries from what police called a "targeted" attack. The two shootings happened about a six-minute drive apart, not too far from Surrey's main hospital. In total, six have been injured, and one killed this year. "The investigations are ongoing," RCMP Corporal Scotty Schumann told me in an email statement. "A lot more work has to be done to determine conclusively what the M.O. is and who all the players are." Since the police clearly aren't willing to share any information they might have, I called up Mani Amar, an anti-gang activist and filmmaker, who has some idea of who the players are. Around this time last year, he told me the shooters were kids in their early twenties, mostly from South Asian families, trying to make a name for themselves in Surrey's street-level dial-a-dope scene. This time Amar says these kids are even younger—18, 19 and 20 years old—and are making more brazen moves. "More brazen in the sense these are happening car-on-car, where they're not waiting for other people to leave," he said. "They're happening in neighbourhoods you wouldn't expect." Amar added they're also making bigger deals, mostly in weed. "We're dealing with low- to- mid level amounts of marijuana, not dime bags but a couple pounds at a time," he said. "My personal feeling is because of the looming legalization… smart older players are getting involved in other trades, and these young bottom feeders are moving in." Surrey residents like Doug Elford, head of the Newton Community Association, aren't impressed with the RCMP's response so far. He called the latest wave of violence "alarming" and wants to see new funding put into prevention efforts. "We experienced over 60 in 2015, that were reported at least, and now we're up to 30 within the first three months of the year," he said. "RCMP will not step up and admit to it yet, but that's what we're understanding—it's a new group of people going at it." "We're hearing gunshots regularly," added Elford. "Personally I've experienced a shooting a half block from my house, where my son was walking home from the store a half hour before… that was too close." This comes after the police announced a $4.5 million drug bust on Friday, April 1, where they acknowledged the increase in gun violence over the month of March. In a press conference, police said they don't think the spike is caused by the same kids, but that drugs are the likely motivation. "After making over 800 arrests and detentions last year, we disrupted those who were involved in the drug conflicts last year," RCMP Superintendent Manny Mann said in a generic statement. "The investigations into the recent shootings are progressing well. We are making headway thanks to the cooperation of the public and the intelligence gleaned through our enforcement efforts." In May last year, the federal government announced funding for 100 new RCMP officers to target Surrey crime. But Elford explained that, so far, the communities of Newton and Whalley haven't seen results. He suggested new boots on the ground seems to have come at the expense of deeper surveillance and investigation. Both Elford and Amar acknowledged that the RCMP can't solve Surrey's gang problems alone. "The community knows who these young adults are, it's time to break this code of silence out there, and get these guys turned in to the RCMP," Elford said. Amar argues the reason violence has returned to Surrey streets is because media, political leaders, and even communities have slowed efforts to fight gang violence. Last summer, a gang tip line, a youth forum on violence, and several other awareness-raising campaigns pushed gangs into the spotlight, and violence eventually slowed down. "As soon as we start making headway, getting ahead of these gangsters, we take our goddamn foot off the gas pedal," said Amar. "These guys went into the shadows last summer, and the community fell off the bandwagon." UPDATE: Surrey RCMP responded to the 31st shooting of the year Monday afternoon. Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.