Community can stop gangs from signing up Native youth

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They might be recognized by a tattoo or by a distinct sign made by the hand, but most people won't be easily recognized as a member of one or another of the Native gangs that are operating in the Edmonton area.

"I heard and seen a lot of what these guys are doing out there, cause they have a lot of parties. They are good guys. It's just the things they do," said Joe, who is a young Aboriginal man.

Joe agreed to speak to Sweetgrass on the condition his real name would not be used.

"I know they deal some drugs, maybe kick a few people around, but if you stay cool with them, they treat you pretty good."

Joe admits he isn't a real gang member, but does a few jobs for them. It's about the money he can make by delivering drugs for some of the gang members.

Part of the reason Joe thinks he is around some of them is a kind of security he feels just from knowing them on the street.

"I don't have a steady place to live right now and I need to do what I can for money," said Joe.

It's been more than two years since he left his hometown to come to Edmonton and it hasn't been easy for him to find a place to stay, he said.

"I stay wherever I can lay my head at night," he said.

Right now, Joe is thinking about getting straight. For him, that means staying away from drugs and alcohol and finding a decent place to live.

"It's not easy trying to get away from all the people that are into crime, because once you get in with them you start to forget about getting a regular job or something like that," he said.

Joe's situation is not isolated and City Police are trying to stem the flow of recruits to gangs.

"Somehow these kids need to know they are being used. These are people looking for somewhere to belong to, but they are in essence victims," said Kelly Gordon, media spokesperson for the Edmonton City Police.

Recently, police arrested about 13 individuals who are connected to Native gangs from Winnipeg. Gordon wants to limit the fame the gangs seem to relish from being mentioned in the media. The police have purposely withheld the names of the gangs the arrested men are affiliated with.

"When we've picked up these guys, we have found scrapbooks with article clippings from the newspapers about the gangs," said Sergeant Bryan Boulanger, media spokesperson.

"We don't see any gangs that are totally Native now. Their Native membership is less than 50-50. Criminals, many of them are just criminals, that is what they all have in common," said Gordon.

Police believe Native gangs originally started in the federal prisons, specifically in Manitoba. Gordon pointed to the prison riot that happened more than four years ago in the Stony Mountain institution near Winnipeg. The Stony institution was the birthplace of one of the more prominent Native gangs, said Gordon.

After the riot, gang members were dispersed to the institutional four winds, he said. Once in other institutions, like those in Alberta, gang members began to recruit new members.

"The younger recruits are knee-deep before they know it. More often than not it leads to a life of crime, but the kids that are recruited are just pieces of meat to be used," said Gordon.

Promises of money, drugs and sex are used to recruit vulnerable kids, he said. Guns are being packed by most gang members.

In northeast Edmonton, a gang called the Northside Boys prompted police and community members three years ago to form Youth Options. An office was set up by Aaron Nichols of the Edmonton Police Service in the Abbotsfield Mall in the area where the criminal work of the gang was most obvious.

"The focus of Youth Options was 100 per cent on the community," said Nichols. Community meetings and meetings with young people involved in crime was a priority, he said. Nichols is concerned that the young people of the area are being discarded.

"Is the problem the kids or is it society and how we look at them? The kids need the community to welcome them and make them part of it," said Nichols. "We judge the and we don't allow them to change. Why don't we look for the good in them?" he asked. "We've got to personalize it. They are our kids, whether they are Aboriginal, white or Asian," said Nichols.

Nichols is concerned that judicial punishment might push young people further into the clutches of the gangs.

"We cannot send our kids to jail. They are going to be adopted by them [gangs] and trained," he said.

Since Nichols left the Youth Options centre, he has kept busy developing a model of a restorative justice program called Community Conferencing, a forum for offenders, victims and their supporters to seek ways to repair damage caused by crimes.

"They are kids looking for a life, the youth that become affiliated with gangs. When you work with youth and offer to show them a different way of doing things, they can make different choices," said Brad Seneca, co-executive director for the Bent Arrow Traditional Healing Society.

Through Bent Arrow, Seneca said he has worked with young people who were leaders of gangs. Most of those he's worked with have decided to change their lifestyles.

Seneca believes gang membership will grow into a bigger problem if not addressed. That starts with understanding who gang members are and where they are coming from, he said.

Once that understanding is in place, the next step is to offer different means to young people to escape the false sense of belonging they feel in gangs, he said.