Starving Gangs of Oxygen: Michael C. Chettleburgh, Part 2

Posted 16 August, 2007 in Author Interview |

TSR presents part two of its interview with Michael C. Chettleburgh, author of Young Thugs: Inside the Dangerous World of Canadian Street Gangs.

You advocate a combined program of suppression and prevention to combat street gangs. Suppression, which the Canadian Conservative government seems to endorse, involves putting more police on the streets and engaging in frequent and visible gang sweeps to round up gang members (which you refer to in your book as being akin to “ridding your lawn of dandelions by snipping off their heads”). Prevention, on the other hand, involves dealing with the root causes of gangsterism: systemic racism, poverty, hopelessness. In other words, suppression deals with existing gangsters; prevention tries to stop new gangsters from ever being created. Why does there seem to be no political will to deal with the root causes of gangsterism in Canada?

The frame of reference for governing politicians is four, maybe five years, less if there is a minority government like we have now. Unfortunately, this time frame is inconsistent with the five-to-ten year period required for good prevention programs to produce results.

There is a much more cynical, if no less accurate, explanation, however. The Harper government, as well as other right-of-centre politicians, tend to take comfort in assuming both the role of youth-crime fear-mongerers and champions of tough on crime measures. Despite crime having declined in Canada since the late ’90s and the relative safety of our big cities, we are told we need more, much more, taxpayer investment in police, courts and prisons, and an expanded if not militaristic approach to street gangs.

This manipulative disconnect between perception and reality is regrettable and will continue, I surmise, because there are so few Canadian politicians who have courage to tackle the root causes of crime. Why? Because the tough-on-crime agenda plays to our fears and it generates votes. Who among us does not want a safe community? Who among us does not feel safer when we see more cops on the street? Tough-on-crime messaging is politicking at its worst, and shunts all that we know about crime prevention to poor, second-class-citizen status.

So faced with the need to garner votes from fearful constituents, and demonstrate that you’ve produced results, it is easier to spend big on suppression, which you can see and feel, rather than tackle prickly and seemingly intractable problems like poverty, discrimination, income inequality, lack of affordable housing, our emerging McJob economy, and the like, which continue to fuel the gang problem.

Writing about Toronto’s troubled Jane-Finch neighbourhood in the June 16, 2007 edition of the Globe and Mail, columnist Joe Friesen remarks,

[I]n their planning sessions, community workers refer solemnly to “boundary issues” that impede program delivery. When the police hold consultations with youth, they have meetings in each distinct area to prevent rival gangs from mingling. It’s as though the kids have redrawn the neighbourhood map and forced the adults to adapt. As a result, the teens from Palisades, who often complain of having nothing to do, don’t use the well-equipped community centre that’s a block away in Crips territory.

How does society counteract this apparently intractable division among certain of its youth?

In the communities in which gang rivalries are most acute, these boundary issues can be quite real, but I am not convinced they are intractable. When you speak to youth who are faced with these issues, they will most often say that they do not venture to areas claimed by specific gangs because they don’t feel safe there. This speaks to the issue of inadequate adult oversight and control of these areas and the community assets within them. So, as simple as it sounds, we need to do more to enhance young people’s sense of community safety, which can be augmented by the presence of caring and committed adults – police, parents, community leaders, community centre staff, outreach workers and volunteers. Together, we need to take a stand and no longer accept the gangs’ control — which is tenuous at best — of entire communities.

In addition, we ought to consider a novel approach which is showing promise in some U.S. cities ravaged by gangs: the gang injunction. Essentially, a gang injunction is a restraining order against a group. It is a civil suit that seeks a court order declaring the gang’s public behavior a nuisance and asking for special rules directed toward its activity. These injunctions are a good way of dealing with various gang nuisances, which may not necessarily be criminal in nature, but are nonetheless responsible for a diminished sense of community safety. For instance, if a gang is known to police as being in control of a specific area, a gang injunction could be sought to prohibit suspected gang members from such things as the use of cell phones, loitering around public buildings, being out between 10 p.m. and sunrise, the wearing of gang colours, or assembly of three or more individuals. With monitoring conducted by police using tips from the public, breaches of these injunctions result in immediate sanction from fines to community service to jail time, which sends a message to gangsters that they are no longer in control of the urban experience.

Pardon the pun, the jury is still out as to whether injunctions prevent crime or simply drive it underground or to a different community. But to the community that is covered by an injunction, the evidence is that people feel safer and therefore gain a sense of confidence that their community is no longer run by gangsters.

Before Young Thugs was published, your editor warned you that the chapter in which you advocate legalizing marijuana in Canada as a means of starving gangs of oxygen would be the most contentious part of the book, even though it represents only nine pages out of 276. Was he right?

My editor, Jim Gifford at HarperCollins, did not so much warn me about how contentious this small chapter would be, but reiterated how contentious we all knew it would be from the outset of our work together. I have presented my views to others in the past about drug reform and I was well aware of how provocative they were for some.

The interesting thing I have experienced is that the response to these arguments depends on the context or environment in which I make my case. If I present these arguments one-on-one or to a small, private group, the majority of people either agree with my position on marijuana legalization, or accept that my argument has merit (even some of my cop friends!). However, in larger public or media settings, at best I win over about 50% of the audience, with my detractors accusing me of advocating the unrestricted legalization of all drugs (which I have never advocated).

There seems to be a lack of courage on the part of some Canadians to admit we have not, and cannot, win the war against drugs, that marijuana is not as harmful as alcohol, or that there is an inextricable connection between street gangs and the trade in illicit drugs. With this small chapter I wanted simply to stimulate debate. It achieved this in spades and page for page, has done more to get the word out about my book than any other section.

The case you make for legalizing marijuana seems fairly strong to me. Why do you think this is still such a contentious issue?

Many people get caught up in a moral quandary and fail to understand that there is no contradiction in being pro-drug reform AND anti-drug at the same time, as I am. With respect to marijuana legalization, I believe that the issue is growing less contentious every day. We know from Health Canada data that several million Canadians over the age of fifteen will consume marijuana this year, which is and will always be the illicit drug of choice for Canadians. When we look back to the former Liberal government’s move to decriminalize small amounts of pot for personal consumption, there was no great consternation among the majority of Canadians, which speaks to the growing societal tolerance for marijuana use.

However, there is still much misinformation and ignorance surrounding pot use, which makes the debate unnecessarily contentious. For example, many of those who hold strident views against pot have not taken the time to understand that judged on the basis of harm, pot is less harmful than other socially acceptable drugs. These same people hold fast to the view that pot is a so-called “gateway drug” that leads to other, more harmful drug consumption (also known as the stepping-stone hypothesis), despite the fact that this has never been conclusively proven. If this hypothesis were true, we would have several million hard drug users in this country, but we don’t, because marijuana satisfies almost all curiosity for most Canadian drug users.

As long as emotion and mythology are accorded the same probative weight as scientific evidence and logic, the drug reform debate will continue to be an incendiary one.

In a Globe and Mail column published on June 26, 2007, Margaret Wente writes about the deadly nature of today’s marijuana, which she claims should not be confused with the milder marijuana smoked by the “peace and love” generation:

How did such a nice drug turn so nasty? Blame a revolution in greenhouse technology along with genetic engineering and cross-breeding of seed stock from Asia and the Middle East. This potent stuff now dominates the market. The UN says it is “distinct enough in appearance and potency to be considered a separate drug.” The evidence shows that it can be highly addictive, especially for kids who suffer from depression, behavioural problems or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. It causes paranoia, aggressiveness and psychosis, and it sharply elevates the risk of schizophrenia. It is very bad, indeed, for people with asthma or multiple sclerosis.

How would you counter Wente’s argument?

I had no idea Ms. Wente was an expert in illicit drug pharmacology and its long term effects!

Look, the Wentes of the world make their case on fear and misinformation, just like people of days gone by who said pot would make you crazy or lead you down the line toward the use of more powerful drugs like heroin or cocaine.

Today’s marijuana is deadly? Then show me medically documented deaths as a result of marijuana use (they don’t exist). Today’s marijuana is more potent? This is hard to know for sure, since today’s highly accurate testing protocols and technologies weren’t around in the peace and love generation when scientists could at best only approximate THC content in pot. Today’s marijuana is more addictive? Then show me the numbers and explain why over the past decade, illicit drug consumption has roughly doubled in North America (with marijuana being the leading drug of choice by far), yet the number of people classified as drug addicted (about 1.3% in North America) remains consistent with 1930s levels.

Setting aside my counterpoints above, assume for the sake of argument that I agree with everything Ms. Wente states. Well, so what? If people want to consume drugs and harm themselves – and the numbers show that demand is growing unabated in Canada and elsewhere – is that not their sovereign right?

We must frame this discussion about pot with a simple question: should the government be our master and not our servant, and therefore be in the paternalistic business of protecting us from harming ourselves? I think not, and we need only point to two other drugs – alcohol and nicotine delivered in cigarettes – to prove that the government has no philosophical problem with regulating drugs that collectively kill fifty thousand Canadians every year.

Ms. Wente and her ilk can’t seem to get their minds around the unstoppable momentum of demand for drugs, despite the attendant dangers of the drug trade (gangster salesmen, dubiously doctored substances, etc.).

Rather than treat illicit drugs as a criminal justice matter, let’s treat it as what it really is: a public health issue. And rather than letting criminal organizations control what gets sold, where it gets sold, and to whom it gets sold, let’s control the big business of drugs and invest the multi-billion dollar fiscal dividend in dealing with the downstream health effects as well as investing in proper prevention and harm reduction. Scaring people about the dangers of pot hasn’t seemed to work all that well, so why not try a different, more rational approach?

If marijuana were legalized, would gangs not simply find other criminal means of raising money, say by increasing their traffic in prostitution, becoming more involved in carjackings and break and enters, or more closely integrating themselves with organized crime units?

Of course, if marijuana were legalized, gangs would turn to other criminal enterprise, first and foremost other illicit drugs like cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and ecstasy. However, these other drugs are decidedly niche products, which most Canadians do not seek to consume. Of these drugs, I would also advocate for the legalization of heroin and cocaine under medical supervision (prescription), which would again stunt the income potential of drug-dealing criminal enterprises.

As far as other criminal activities are concerned – prostitution, fraud, auto theft, and the like – taken together their economic potential is tiny in comparison to the huge business of drugs. So through intelligent legalization, we cripple the economic potential of dealing drugs and ergo the incentive that attracts many young people to join gangs. This is not a complete solution to gangs, but it is one way to upset the relatively attractive risk-reward proposition that confronts young people today.

One of the reasons that gangs feel they can act with impunity has to do with the culture of fear that surrounds them. Many members of afflicted communities are afraid to come forward as witnesses to gang violence because they fear reprisals. (The Amon Beckles killing was a reprisal killing.) How do we counteract this culture of fear in our urban communities?

That’s a great question, for which there really is no easy answer. The “stop snitchin’ ” culture within the gang world is a real one and major gangs make it known to those around them that there are consequences for helping the police or even, if you are a victim of a gang crime, seeking redress through the criminal justice system. Down in the U.S., witness intimidation is a factor in upwards of 90% of gang crimes and is increasingly a problem here.

There are several things, however, we can do to counteract this phenomenon. After a gang crime, a highly visible police presence is essential, and by that I mean cops out of their cars talking to many residents, which will create uncertainty in the minds of gangsters as to who may be talking to police. Another thing we need is a truly national, accessible, and more coordinated witness protection program, although I would note that many people who witness a gang crime are not prepared for the level of commitment (relocation, new identity, leaving behind family members, etc.) contemplated under a witness protection arrangement. As well, we need to make penalties upon conviction for crimes like obstruction of justice and criminal contempt of court much more severe (like fifteen or twenty years), which may provide a deterrent effect for gangsters who may wish to intimidate others. We should consider introducing “hearsay exception” legislation that would allow some out-of-court statements by intimidated witnesses to be used as evidence, even if the witnesses doesn’t come to court to testify (normally such statements are inadmissible and rejected as hearsay). And while this may sound glib, residents need to “take back the streets” and cooperate with police, even at the risk of peril to themselves. In my experience, the communities that turn the corner on gangs are those that simply stop tolerating their behaviour and criminal activities.

You posit a ten-year window before Canada’s incipient gang problem becomes a full-blown epidemic. What practical actions can Canadians take to avoid this problem spiralling out of control?

In my book I propose a sixteen-point approach to dealing with gangs, which incorporates some of the best international thinking on targeted police suppression, prevention, diversion, re-integration, and community mobilization. If we were to properly fund and work the plan I propose, we would prevail over street gangs in the long run.

The biggest barriers we face to dealing constructively with street gangs, however, are the willingness of Canadians to act and our culture of complacency, which prevails when we are faced with big problems (think: global warming). The majority of us see the street gang issue as either a police problem or a problem that affects only troubled communities, and we therefore sidestep personal involvement in solving it. Many Canadians bitch and moan about gangs and violence at the office water cooler or on AM radio call-in shows, but won’t lift a finger to do anything about it.

So, you are concerned about the gang problem? Well then do something, anything! Mentor a child, provide meaningful employment to an at-risk youth, clean up your community, volunteer at a homework club or sports league, stop buying street drugs from gangsters, share information with police, be a sterling role model to your children, hold politicians accountable for their justice system investments and their continual downloading of services to cash-strapped city governments, stop exporting quality manufacturing jobs offshore, stop looking the other way.

There are no magic bullet solutions to street gangs, and what is simply required is the engagement of all citizens who are concerned about the health of their community and the future livelihood of young people.

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