Shattering the Myths of Street Gangs: Michael C. Chettleburgh, Part 1

Posted 15 August, 2007 in Author Interview |

Michael C. Chettleburgh is one of Canada’s foremost authorities on street gangs. Since 1991, he has run his own consultancy specializing in criminal justice issues. He wrote the 2002 Canadian Police Survey on Youth Gangs for the federal government and has also developed street-gang awareness programs for law-enforcement agencies. He is the author of Young Thugs: Inside the Dangerous World of Canadian Street Gangs, an unflinching and eye-opening exposé of the makeup, workings, and politics surrounding Canadian youth gangs.

Michael C. Chettleburgh agreed to be interviewed for TSR. The interview is long, and Chettleburgh’s responses are thorough and comprehensive. Accordingly, the interview has been broken into two parts. Part one, below, deals with the composition of Canada’s street gangs and dispels some common myths surrounding youth gangs and gang crime. Part two, which will be posted tomorrow, offers some suggestions and policy options intended to starve gangs of oxygen and combat the growing problem of youth gangs in Canada.

How did you first become involved in researching Canadian street gangs?

Back in ’96 I was retained by the Ottawa Police Service to evaluate the effectiveness of a police-run youth centre in a so-called “troubled” community that had persistent gang, drug, and violence problems. During this project, I became quite intrigued by the street gang phenomenon and the broader question of why some young people chose to participate in a street gang. As they say, one thing led to another and later I developed street gang training programs for police and conducted the first ever national survey of youth gangs for the Solicitor General of Canada.

What first convinced you that this was a pressing issue for the Canadian public?

In 1995, two tragic incidents signified to me that the street gang problem was growing and that we needed to pay better attention to it. In July of that year, thirteen-year-old Joseph “Beeper” Spence of Winnipeg was murdered by three gang-involved teenagers who mistakenly thought Spence was from a rival gang. In October, in the City of Ottawa, another innocent young man, seventeen-year-old Sylvain Leduc, was murdered by members of the Ace Crew gang.

These murders were widely covered in the media and sparked fierce discussion and debate about youth crime, the “crisis” of youth gangs, and, of course, what we should do about it. The interesting story to me was not the murders, per se, however tragic they indeed were. Rather, I found it curious that public attention to the issue of gangs disappeared rather quickly, as if the “average Canadian” felt it was not a problem after all. The complacency of Canadians on this issue was telling, and portended a worsening problem in my view.

In Young Thugs, you suggest that the tipping point in terms of the public’s perception of the gang problem — the point at which “the street gang issue morphed into a public crisis” — was the murder of Amon Beckles on November 18, 2005. Why do you think that this particular incident, coming several months after the “summer of the gun” in Toronto, was the tipping point?

Well, I should say that prior to the Beckles murder, our country was littered with various “tipping points” on gangs, which invariably did not produce any meaningful change in either the manner in which we dealt with the problem or the engagement level of everyday Canadians. The Beckles murder was different because of its sheer audacity. Here was an eighteen-year-old black man, attending the funeral of a friend shot in an alleged gang crime in which the Toronto Police suggested Beckles was a possible material witness, gunned down on the steps of a church! The murder certainly highlighted the troubling issue of witness intimidation, and this struck a chord in the general community because, after all, anyone of us could one day be a witness to a gang crime.

Irrespective of one’s faith, we respect places of worship and expect them to be safe bastions from all manner of harm. Because he was shot on church property, however, his murder was a gross violation of this sense of sanctity we accord to places of worship and signified to Canadians that gang violence respects no boundaries.

What about the murder of Jane Creba on Boxing Day 2005? Did this have a larger impact in the public consciousness because Creba was white?

The Creba homicide hit much closer to home for most Canadians, in part because of the manner in which she died. I believe that both race and gender in the Creba case conspired to produce a larger impact than the Beckles homicide.

When a black man is shot, many people jump to conclusions and assume that it was gang related. Many also assume that somehow, the victim may have played a part in his own demise, that, in some perverse “live by the sword, die by the sword” karmic way, he may have deserved his fate and that he was dispensable to society. Is this racial prejudice? Absolutely. And we have to recognize that however tolerant we pride ourselves to be, racial prejudice and stereotypes endure. Certainly, when a white girl is shot, no such similar conclusions are made and we struggle to comprehend the gravity of the situation and how it occurred in the first place. When we can’t reconcile a devastating incident with some kind of easy-to-understand causality, we feel the impact much more.

Much of Young Thugs is devoted to shattering myths about gangs and gang membership. You point out, for example, that the traditional notion of racial homogeneity amongst gangsters is not always true, but that many gangs are ethnically diverse. How and why does the stereotype of the black gangster in the hoodie and low-riders persist?

The notion of ethnically diverse gangs, where members are united less by shared culture and heritage and more by economic pursuit and self-protection, frankly is not as sensational or troubling in our minds, or in media circles, as the violent and marauding inner city black gang, the cunning and secretive Asian gang, or the desperate and dangerous western Aboriginal gang, among others.

Many people try to understand the gang issue by compartmentalizing it (like the perceived dominant category of “black gangsters”), which helps those outside these ethnic groupings rationalize that it is a problem that doesn’t concern them, or that somehow it is a problem that these communities have brought upon themselves. When people begin to understand that street gangs are ethnically diverse, they are troubled by the fact that youth (including their own children) who heretofore have not traditionally been considered “at-risk,” may indeed be so.

As far as the specific stereotype of black gangsters is concerned, the Canadian media apparatus is concentrated in Toronto, a city that for the past few years has led the country in gang violence, the majority of which has featured the black community. It’s no wonder, then, that inside and outside our city, the casual observer sees this largely as a problem created and prolonged by the actions of the black community, somehow as if other ethnocultural groups are immune from the problem.

Yet, across the country, we see similar gang violence affecting the white community, the East Asian community, the young Aboriginal community, the Arabic community, and others. But these incidents don’t get the same play as Toronto’s “epidemic of black-on-black violence.” So the stereotype continues.

When did so-called “hybrid” gangs develop in Canada?

No one can say for sure, but I began hearing about and seeing this hybridization of street gangs around the late ’90s.

What led to the development of hybrid gangs? Was this simply a practical, economic concern, or were there other factors at work?

In part, the hybrid nature of many of Canada’s street gangs reflects the multicultural nature of our populace. While racial strife has been a feature of the postwar American experience, Canada has largely been a country of ethnocultural harmony and this has been reflected in the composition of our street gangs.

Generally, however, I think the underlying economics of gangs has been responsible for most of this hybridization. When you look at the myriad illegal ways in which gangs of all description try to make their money, you are also faced with a myriad players from virtually all ethnic groups. Traditionally, many of these “lines of business” have been controlled by specific groups –Jamaicans controlled crack and pot, for example, South Americans the cocaine trade, Asians the heroin business, white outlaw bikers the prostitution business, etc. – so if you are a profit-hungry street gang, you need to learn to get along with other diverse gangsters.

Birds of a feather still flock together, indeed, but if an economic purpose is served, then collaboration is assured and we see that reflected in the composition of street gangs.

Another myth you shatter in your book is the “myth of migration,” that is, the notion that gangs export themselves and their members across national borders. The Crips in Toronto, you suggest, are a very different entity from the Crips in South Central Los Angeles. Why has this not been made clear in the media?

In fairness, some media outlets have begun to make this distinction, but you are correct in your premise that not enough has been done. In some respects, the media operates at the Grade 8 “lowest common denominator” level – they produce meaningful news stories but they don’t overwhelm the reader, viewer, or listener with too many esoteric facts, of which the true provenance of Canadian Crips may certainly qualify. As well, the Crips “brand” has a rich historical pedigree, a certain media gravitas that conveys fear, danger and suspicion. Some in the media use this as a convenient backdrop to their stories to give them weight and a sense of foreboding, which is lost if you explain that Crips in Canada are composed of young men who are only borrowing the name of the world’s most famous gang identifier!

Does the lack of a centralized organizational structure (like, for example, that of the Hell’s Angels) make street gangs easier or harder to combat?

From a suppression perspective, the relatively disordered nature of the average street gang, combined with the often fluid nature of an individual’s gang affiliation, make it more difficult for police to piece together the DNA sequence of a street gang and define its leadership structure relative to the tightly controlled and hierarchical nature of traditional organized crime (TOC) organizations. However, the fact that street gangs are largely “disorganized crime” makes them easier to combat on balance.

Unlike their more organized TOC counterparts, street gangs lack the financial wherewithal, sophistication, and contacts to fend off police and other criminal justice system actors who are committed to their demise. At the same time, unlike members of TOCs, who tend to be so-called “career criminals” with virtually no chance of exit from their gang, many young street gang members either leave their gangs with no repercussion or are willing to take the chance. So, from a suppression and intervention standpoint, it is possible to show street gang members that there is a way out.

On your website, there is an article about the apparent migration of the Latino gang Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), which Newsweek has called the “most dangerous gang in North America,” into Canada. Does this indicate that the myth of migration is beginning to become a reality?

No, not really.

By “myth of migration,” I referred to large U.S. street gangs purposefully exporting members to Canada to establish new footholds. There is still little evidence of this and I cannot see this ever being a major factor in street gang expansion in Canada. However, U.S. street gang members do migrate throughout the United States and even, from time to time, to Canada – to escape police pressure, to get away from violent rivalries, to simply move with their families for a better future.

In the case of MS-13 members who are mostly of Salvadoran and Honduran descent, the gang boasts perhaps the most robust social network of any other major U.S. gang. So, if you are an MS-13 member in Los Angeles and are wanted for a crime, and if a fellow gang member has relatives in Canada, you may take an extended trip up here just to let the situation cool down. But this kind of move cannot be equated with a conscious decision, on the part of major MS-13 gang sets in L.A., New York City, or Chicago to export their “franchise” to Canada.

Tomorrow: Starving Gangs of Oxygen

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