[Newsbot]

Title: The gangs of Winnipeg
Category: Law & Order
Posted By: Curtman
Date: 2013-11-22 08:49:05
Canadian

[Curtman]

$1:

Justice Minister Andrew Swan says the province is doing everything in its power to make Manitoba an uninviting place for criminal organizations, including street gangs.

Funny, that's not the impression I got after reading the operational review of the Winnipeg Police Service conducted by the Canadian Police Association.

The CPA report, which is expected to be released officially in the coming weeks, paints a pretty grim picture of Winnipeg's gang problem and the challenges it poses for cops.

"Gangs are a key and distinguishing feature of the urban landscape in Winnipeg," the report states. "A component of increasing gang violence in the inner city area is tension and conflict between identity groups in the inner city; these issues contribute to the instability and unhealthy lifestyles experienced by many youth
...
Many new visible minority immigrant youth from war-torn countries are vulnerable to gang recruitment in part because of a lack of access to school and community participation, an inability to obtain employment and general social barriers, the report says.

"A component of increasing gang violence in the inner city area is tension and conflict between identity groups in the inner city," the report says. "These issues contribute to the instability and unhealthy lifestyles experienced by many youth."

Gang conflict is not limited to battles over territory, either, the report says. Police describe the level of violence among some immigrant-based gangs as "extreme" where gangs engage in violence for the sake of violence.

"While other street gangs in Winnipeg may resort to violence for a specific purpose, for the Mad Cowz and African Mafia, violence is the goal and is both gratuitous and extreme," the report says.

All of which is making it increasingly difficult to integrate immigrant and aboriginal youth into educational and work opportunities and "reduces their sense of inclusion in Canadian social and economic life."

Dumb on crime doesn't work. Prohibition is their catalyst. It funds everything they do, prison is their university.

[martin14]

what, no big thumbs up for your drug dealing gang buddies ?

[Curtman]

martin14 martin14:

what, no big thumbs up for your drug dealing gang buddies ?

No, prohibitionists like yourself support their business model. I don't. I spend a significant amount of time convincing misguided people such as yourself that you encourage gangsterism when you oppose regulation. There is no success for you to point to when justifying prohibition. Only failure after failure after failure after failure.

[Regina]

Sour grapes..............

[Gunnair]

Odd....not a word in the quote about gangs and drugs - mostly gang violence for the sake of violence. Ending prohibition won't fix that.

Oops....just undermined your argument and provided fuel for the argument that ending prohibition won't end gang violence.

[ShepherdsDog]

Sure it will....cue the song....

[Curtman]

Gunnair Gunnair:

Odd....not a word in the quote about gangs and drugs - mostly gang violence for the sake of violence. Ending prohibition won't fix that.

$1:

Gang conflict is not limited to battles over territory, either, the report says.
...
the gang problem in Winnipeg is not getting better, it's getting worse

Odd, you didn't even read the article. Oh no wait, not odd, typical. I meant typical.

Try this one:

Winnipeg's gang problem is a drug-prohibition problem

$1:

So Winnipeg has a gang problem? I'm guessing it has something to do with the illicit drug market, which is usually controlled by gangs of various kinds. If so, this is entirely predictable.

As the authors of last year's Effect of Drug Law Enforcement on Drug-Related Violence wrote, "... From an evidence-based public policy perspective, gun violence and the enrichment of organized crime networks appear to be natural consequences of drug prohibition."

In other words, drug prohibition produces crime -- just as alcohol prohibition did. Our collective inability -- or is it unwillingness? -- to grasp this lesson is on full display in Winnipeg today.

What's more interesting than the finding that drug prohibition causes gang-related violence is our collective inability to learn from repeated demonstrations of this connection.

For some reason, we seem to think that what's happening in Northern Mexico -- where drug trafficking gangs are at war with each other and with the Mexican army -- is somehow different from what's happening in Winnipeg, where drug trafficking gangs are at war with each other and the Winnipeg police.

What's equally interesting is the persistence of the belief in harsher sentences and tougher enforcement as the one-size-fits-all remedy. If this were true, the United States, with the harshest drug-sentencing laws in the democratic world, would have achieved that happy drug-free utopia dreamed of by Nancy Reagan. And Russia, which today has an epidemic of heroin addiction and severe sentencing practices, would be a very different place.

The persistent failure of harsh sentences to reduce drug demand and drug use, wherever you look in the democratic world, seems unable to impress the defenders of the get-tough orthodoxy. Police lament that the same names recur on charge sheets and complain that judges are too soft and the criminal justice system is inadequate to the task.

But what gets lost, in the unwillingness to grasp the lessons of history, is one very obvious and simple social fact: Illicit drugs are a commodity in a market ruled by laws that are every bit as reliable as those that rule the universe.

Yet somehow these market laws of supply and demand are held in suspension -- as if they don't or should not apply -- when the problem is illicit drugs.

It should be clear that as long as there is a demand for drugs, someone will supply them, because demand creates supply, and as long as the drugs themselves are prohibited, the suppliers will be criminals. Hence only those willing to bear the risk premium will profit from the supply for illicit drugs.

That makes them criminals, and since they can't arbitrate their market conflicts in courts of law, they gun it out with each other and with the police.

Maybe it should not be this way, but that's how it works in black markets, and how it has always worked. Why should Winnipeg be any different?

So Winnipeg's gang war will persist until one or another faction establishes dominance over the others and the market for illicit drugs stabilizes again.

Most likely this will happen with the unintentional assistance of the police, who will successfully -- however temporarily -- incarcerate enough members of one faction to give rival factions the advantage.

This is how gang wars end, unless and until policy makers face up to the laws of supply and demand. And there is no indication of that happening very soon.

Craig Jones, who holds a PhD in political economy from Queen's University, is a former executive director of the John Howard Society of Canada.

[Gunnair]

Curtman Curtman:

Gunnair Gunnair:

Odd....not a word in the quote about gangs and drugs - mostly gang violence for the sake of violence. Ending prohibition won't fix that.

$1:

Gang conflict is not limited to battles over territory, either, the report says.
...
the gang problem in Winnipeg is not getting better, it's getting worse

Odd, you didn't even read the article. Oh no wait, not odd, typical. I meant typical.

Try this

Double checked your quote...thanks for putting it up. Still didn't have the word 'drugs' in it, which means I read and you did not.

The second quote is simply a sign that you recognized your failure to make an anti-prohibition point wrt gang violence with an article that failed to mention drugs or prohibition.

Oops again, eh?

[Curtman]

Gunnair Gunnair:

Double checked your quote...thanks for putting it up. Still didn't have the word 'drugs' in it, which means I read and you did not.

They fight over territory for what then?

Profit... But from where?

Gunnair Gunnair:

mostly gang violence for the sake of violence

Could you please find me a quote for that one? The article mentions that the violence is not only about territory, but also gratuitous violence, presumably for intimidation.

Supply and demand dictates that increasing prohibition will bring more ruthlessness. There is no evidence to dispute this, and tonnes of it from all corners of the world that prove it.

[Gunnair]

Curtman Curtman:

Gunnair Gunnair:

Double checked your quote...thanks for putting it up. Still didn't have the word 'drugs' in it, which means I read and you did not.

They fight over territory for what then?

Profit... But from where?

Gunnair Gunnair:

mostly gang violence for the sake of violence

Could you please find me a quote for that one? The article mentions that the violence is not only about territory, but also gratuitous violence, presumably for intimidation.

$1:

Gang conflict is not limited to battles over territory, either, the report says. Police describe the level of violence among some immigrant-based gangs as "extreme" where gangs engage in violence for the sake of violence.

There's some irony when you accuse me of not reading the story. As for your other points, Curt, since you can't quote that this is about drugs, nor even about what kind of drugs, trying to make a reason that the article is alluding to it is the weakest of arguments. Tap out already. You picked a piss poor article to make a point and arguing like a child that's caught but is unable to take responsibility for it makes you look just more immature here.

[Curtman]

Gunnair Gunnair:

Curtman Curtman:

Gunnair Gunnair:

Double checked your quote...thanks for putting it up. Still didn't have the word 'drugs' in it, which means I read and you did not.

They fight over territory for what then?

Profit... But from where?

Gunnair Gunnair:

mostly gang violence for the sake of violence

Could you please find me a quote for that one? The article mentions that the violence is not only about territory, but also gratuitous violence, presumably for intimidation.

$1:

Gang conflict is not limited to battles over territory, either, the report says. Police describe the level of violence among some immigrant-based gangs as "extreme" where gangs engage in violence for the sake of violence.

There's some irony when you accuse me of not reading the story. As for your other points, Curt, since you can't quote that this is about drugs, nor even about what kind of drugs, trying to make a reason that the article is alluding to it is the weakest of arguments. Tap out already. You picked a piss poor article to make a point and arguing like a child that's caught but is unable to take responsibility for it makes you look just more immature here.

How does a person who is intelligent enough to dress themself in the morning, and operate a computer, read that and determine that the majority of violence has nothing to do with territory?

Does someone help you in the morning?


When you read something like this:

$1:

Violence Brings Attention
When they first emerged on the scene in the early 1990s as the enforcement arm of the Gulf cartel, Los Zetas brought a new dynamic to the violence in Mexico. As deserters from Mexico’s Special Air Mobile Forces Group, they introduced military tactics and weapons into the fight.

Although other cartels quickly followed suit and stood up their own enforcer groups comprised of former soldiers armed with military ordnance, like the Sinaloa Federation’s Los Pelones, Los Zetas continued to generate much media and law enforcement attention. This was due not only to their background as special operations forces, but also to their penchant for gratuitous and overwhelming violence. Unlike other enforcer groups, which tended to operate in more confined geographic areas, the Gulf cartel deployed Los Zetas across Mexico and even into Central America. The group has also publicly taunted the government, such as via the audacious signs Los Zetas hung in Nuevo Laredo in 2008 offering better-paying jobs to the Mexican soldiers deployed to the city to counter them.

Do you think, oh well this isn't about drug prohibition. Just some people who like to cause suffering for no reason?

You've probably sobered up enough to realize that makes no sense, right?

[Gunnair]

Curtman Curtman:

How does a person who is intelligent enough to dress themself in the morning, and operate a computer, read that and determine that the majority of violence has nothing to do with territory?

Does someone help you in the morning?

The irony continues as you deflect the fact that nowhere is drugs mentioned in the article, yet gangs can fight about a lot of things. Prostitution, gambling, blackmail, human trafficking etc.

The problem is, that you tossed up an article with no mention of drugs than trotted out that tired old Curtisms about ending prohibition...dumb on crime...when there was no such mention of those things in the article.

In other words, you threw up an article on the Maple Leafs and began bitching about the Roughriders.

And now, the tantrum begins because your failure has been pointed out, not that much pointing out was needed since you opted to advertise it to all.

[Curtman]

The article clearly states that dumb on crime doesn't work. The problem is getting worse.

And you have no suggestions how to make it better?

Should we follow failed american policy from 20 years ago? Or recognize the source of the problem and deal with it?

[Gunnair]

Curtman Curtman:

The article clearly states that dumb on crime doesn't work. The problem is getting worse.

And you have no suggestions how to make it better?

Should we follow failed american policy from 20 years ago? Or recognize the source of the problem and deal with it?

Impossible to have an adult conversation with you, Curt, as you argue like a child. This isn't a conversation about how to make things better, this is a conversation about your post, the made up connection you inserted, your immature inability to admit the utter failings of your argument, the follow on temper tantrum after being caught out, the useless lashing out, and finally the complete ignoring of your absolute failure and follow on pwning to try and insert yet another lame attempt at rational conversation.

The circle of Curt continues!