- TORONTO (CP) -- Police battling outlaw bikers want to recruit ordinary
Canadians into the fray -- and be less secretive about their work.
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- Bike-gang investigators from across Canada
decided at a recent conference here they must show the public that bikers
are behind an array of street crime that touches almost everyone, said
conference spokesman Julian Fantino.
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- The hope is that a better-informed public
will pressure government for crucial changes, said Fantino, head of the
Ontario police chiefs association.
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- "We sometimes tend to be a little
too secretive," he said.
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- "I think there's much more willingness
(now) to share this kind of information, to share with the public at large.
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- "The public needs to be more aware,
as do the lawmakers, that organized crime is a very real public safety
issue, a very real public safety concern that plays out right at the community
level."
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- Police would like to see a federal law
that requires convicted organized crime members to prove why their assets
should not be seized, said Fantino, the York Region chief.
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- The onus is now on officers to show that
certain income or property was ill-gotten gain, a forensic accounting task
requiring "all kinds of machinations and terrible expenses."
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- Laws imposing special, tougher sentences
for organized-crime-related offences is also necessary, Fantino said.
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- But Ottawa has so far been slow to respond
to requests for such reform, he said.
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- Fantino said ordinary Canadians tend
to think of bikers and other organized criminals in abstract terms that
don't affect their daily lives.
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- "When you talk about organized crime,
it's almost as if you're talking about a cloud of radioactive dust,"
he said.
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- "People don't really seem to be
preoccupied by a whole lot of what's going on."
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- But bikers are extensively involved in
the drug business, which itself leads to such routine crime as prostitution,
break-ins and robbery, he noted.
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- Police at the Toronto conference also
decided more effort and money is needed to set up teams of organized-crime
specialists who can devote long periods of time to investigations, he said.
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- Police in Canada still tend to be "event-driven"
rather than spending resources on long-term projects, said Fantino.a
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