Shaughnessy(Vancouver West Side) murder linked to organized crime in Toronto

[st7860]

http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=52962e05-2f86-4ed0-9433-a458d25e4f40

A man gunned down outside a $5-million mansion in Vancouver was connected to Asian organized crime in Toronto, police say.

A 10-year-old girl called 911 Saturday night to report her father was shot. Hong Chao "Raymond" Huang died before police arrived at the palatial Shaughnessy home.

Blood spatters on the grass outside the front gate and a charcoal brazier and incense sticks from a sombre ceremony conducted by Huang's family were all that remained yesterday at the scene of the killing.

The property has an assessed value of $5.2 million. Title is held by Mei Zhen Wang, described on government documents as retired.

A police source told The Province that Huang, 45, was a resource person in the Big Circle Boys who could get large amounts of money to invest in drug shipments and other criminal enterprises.

Yesterday, a Toronto police expert in Asian organized crime said he knew of Huang, but would not elaborate because Vancouver police were investigating the killing.

Vancouver police Const. Tim Fanning confirmed Huang was known to police in other Canadian jurisdictions. He said Vancouver police will probe links to other cities and may investigate leads overseas.

Huang's killing is an example of a new trend in Vancouver homicides, Fanning said.

"It would appear that there's more activity with the criminals shooting it out in the streets. Most of the time, it's gangs or associates."

A police source told The Province earlier that Huang was a high-ranking Dai Lo, or Big Brother, in the Big Circle Boys criminal organization.

Members of the Big Circle Boys are grouped into cells of four to 15 members, with a Big Brother in charge of each cell, said Toronto police organized-crime specialist Det. Raymond Miu. Some cells are linked to each other, some are not.

Big Circle Boys are involved in producing and selling ecstasy and marijuana, Miu said. Members will commit murders and kidnappings for ransom as part of their own disputes or as contractors for other criminals, he said.

Big Circle Boys also control credit-card counterfeiting in Canada, according to a 1999 RCMP Criminal Intelligence Directorate report.

"Their strength is that they are networked globally and have contacts with many groups involved in diverse criminal activities," the report said.

Big Circle Boys may be murdered in conflicts with rival members or other organized crime groups, particularly when drugs are concerned, Miu said.

After the killing Saturday night, bullet shells littered the ground outside the granite walls surrounding the yellow Huang mansion.

The police source said Huang kept a low profile, but had been linked to one or two money seizures involving $70,000 to $100,000. Police believe he came to Canada about 10 years ago, the source said.

Big Circle Boys originated with the Red Guards, the paramilitary troops of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Many of these men were sent to prison camps after the death of Mao Zedong. Some escaped and ended up forming criminal organizations in North America.

Huang's killing was Vancouver's 18th homicide of the year.

ebaron@png.canwest.com

[UrbanPoet]

wow.. BCB are still big players in the game eh....
I remember back then it was all about the 18 buddha. BCB still seems to be going on strong. I guess they were the ones that stood the test of time.

[kuqdew]

:-0

[st7860]

what kind of gang leader lives in a $4.5 million dollar house and doesn't travel with bodyguards?!

[ab20]

what kind of gang leader lives in a $4.5 million dollar house and doesn't travel with bodyguards?!
a brotherless Dai Lo:D

[st7860]

http://www.canada.com/theprovince/story.html?id=e7d96449-889d-43ec-9194-37d30129f1e9&k=13782

Two men with gang ties were gunned down in a silver Mercedes in the Marpole area of Granville Street early Tuesday.

Vancouver police confirmed at a news conference the victims were a 31-year-old South Asian man and a 25-year-old Persian man.

No names have been released.


A source with knowledge of the gang situation in Vancouver says all indications are the recent rash of shooting incidents is tied to the drug trade.

They're just all frigging killing each other," said the unnamed police source. "It's unbelievable."

"Everybody involved [in the recent incidents] are total gang-member *******s."


The two men were gunned down in their southbound car at Granville and 70th when the Mercedes was blocked by two SUVs at about 2:30 a.m. Tuesday. Police say a shooter opened fire through a passenger-side window of the car before the vehicles fled.

Police cordoned off several blocks to collect evidence at the scene. Granville reopened about five hours later after the car, with the men's bodies still inside, was towed away.

At a morning press conference, Deputy police Chief Bob Rich said Vancouver has launched a gang task force to look at the escalating wave of violence on the city's streets.


Vancouver police spokesman Const. Tim Fanning said the violence, with three incidents and four dead in just the past week, is shocking.

"It's absolute madness," Fanning told Global BC early Tuesday.


The latest shootings come on the heels of the gang-style slaying of one man in Shaughnessy on the weekend and the killing of another in an east Vancouver restaurant last week.

A police source says the recent wave of shootings appears to be tied to drugs and gangs.

"There are no innocent people," said the source. "They are all drug-dealing idiots."

- On Monday afternoon, Coquitlam RCMP were called to a report of shots fired on Lougheed Highway between Coleman and Schoolhouse. A suspect vehicle was quickly located and those inside were known to police. No one was hurt.


RECENT GANG-RELATED MURDERS:

Nov. 3: Hong Chao "Raymond" Huang, 45, is shot down outside his Shaughnessy mansion. He is reported to be a well-connected kingpin with the Big Circle Boys, a ruthless gang with roots in Hong Kong and North America's Chinatowns.

Oct. 31: Hiep Vinh Do, a 51-year-old known to police, is shot and killed in a small Vietnamese restaurant in the 4800-block Victoria Drive.

Oct. 19: Six men are killed inside a Whalley highrise suite in an execution-style slaying. Four of those killed are tied to the drug trade in Surrey, while two others are innocent victims who happened to be on the scene.

Sept. 24: A man is found shot dead in the middle of the afternoon in a black SUV on Penticton Street, next to Vancouver Technical Secondary School. The car doors are open and the motor is still running when police arrive.

Sept. 8: Gurmit Singh Dhak, 29, and a 21-year-old woman are shot by two masked gunmen at the upscale Quattro on Fourth restaurant. Dhak was convicted of manslaughter in the 1999 death of Doan Minh Vu, 19.

Aug. 9: Two gunmen enter the Fortune Happiness restaurant on East Broadway around 4:30 a.m. and open fire, killing two and sending six others to hospital.

[ali123]

this reminds of WAR (movie)

[AirBosh]

wow Vancouver is like the wild wild west....

oh yea 18 Buddha, I remember seeing them on Asian Avenue back when it was popular.

Wonder what happen to them..

[st7860]

pics
http://www.canada.com/theprovince/gallery/marpolegallery.html

[loho33]

wow.. BCB are still big players in the game eh....
I remember back then it was all about the 18 buddha. BCB still seems to be going on strong. I guess they were the ones that stood the test of time.

Credit to BCB..these guys are highly mobile and work in small groups..they have global connection so it's easy for them to move into a city and start offering big deals to local gangs/mafia. They dont have enough footmans to fight wars, they usually have other people fighting their battles.

[AirBosh]

Credit to BCB..these guys are highly mobile and work in small groups..they have global connection so it's easy for them to move into a city and start offering big deals to local gangs/mafia. They dont have enough footmans to fight wars, they usually have other people fighting their battles.

LOHO are you some sort of Mafia/Gang expert?

[aimfox]

luckily its not in toronto

[AirBosh]

luckily its not in toronto

yea in toronto it's mostly black on black gang shooting and the Weekyly drug bust from Asians.

[Lone_Prodigy]

luckily its not in toronto

Stupidest thing I've heard all day. NIMBYs like you are the reason the world is going to the dogs.

[yao416]

what kind of gang leader lives in a $4.5 million dollar house and doesn't travel with bodyguards?!

5.2 million :eek:

a brotherless Dai Lo:D

:D

yea in toronto it's mostly black on black gang shooting and the Weekyly drug bust from Asians.

so true lol

[st7860]

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=45d1df08-2bde-4dc1-bcf4-40dae6fcc5c8&p=1

Vancouver police say they are working hard to find out who's responsible for the killing of two young men at Granville and 70th Avenue early Tuesday morning in what appears to be the latest in a series of gang-related hits.

But if history is any guide, those responsible for the crime -- like most gangland killers -- will never be caught.

According to figures released last month by Statistics Canada, only 45 per cent of gang-related killings in Canada in 2006 were solved by police, compared to 80 per cent of non-gang homicides.

The figures are even worse in B.C., with just 39 per cent of gang-related killings cleared by police (compared to 68 per cent of non-gang homicides).

And this year is unlikely to be any better.

Police have so far made arrests in virtually none of the high-profile gang murders this year -- including the August shooting death of two people at the Fortune Happiness restaurant in Vancouver and the slaying last month of six people, including two innocent bystanders, at an apartment in Whalley.

Police and prosecutors say gang-related homicides are particularly tough to investigate and bring to trial.

At a news conference Tuesday, Vancouver police department spokesman Const. Tim Fanning said investigating such cases is "very difficult [because] the people that are involved in gang activity aren't ones to come forward to the police."

And witnesses who aren't gang members are often too afraid to come forward.

"For any organized crime case, whether it's homicide or otherwise, the difficulty in the prosecution is getting witnesses to cooperate," said Mark Levitz, a provincial Crown counsel who works on organized-crime cases. "They're afraid of retribution."

In some cases, said Levitz, witnesses are directly threatened by a gang member to keep quiet.

But often that's not necessary, he said, because people simply assume that testifying against a gang is dangerous.

"Many gangs have reputations for fear and intimidation, so because of that reputation people are afraid to testify," said Levitz.

Even when witnesses do come forward, he said, they often have criminal pasts themselves, which can make it difficult to get a judge or jury to believe them.

"Their credibility will be attacked by the defence and that poses a challenge for the prosecution, because without a credible witness, it's difficult to prove the Crown's case," he said.

That means police often have to work harder to dig up corroborating evidence that will back up what the witness is saying, said Levitz.

Yvon Dandurand, a criminologist at the University College of the Fraser Valley, said witness cooperation can be a particular problem among immigrant groups who have come from countries where police are corrupt or incompetent.

"In the minds of some people, in particular ethnic groups, the thing they think of is: 'If I go to the police ... can they actually protect me?'" he said.

Dandurand said that reluctance is a problem because police need such people to come forward if they want to crack cases involving ethnic gangs.

"The people who are most likely to help you solve crime and maintain law and order are the people who are in contact with these organized [crime] groups and are not sympathetic," he said.

Dandurand said the best way for police to improve their credibility among ethnic groups is by doing more policing in their communities and paying more attention to their everyday concerns, such as noise complaints.

In spite of the number of recent shootings, it's not clear that gang-related violence in B.C. is getting significantly worse.


Email to a friend

Printer friendly
Font:****For example, an internal RCMP report on organized crime produced earlier this year noted that the number of gang- and drug-related homicides in B.C. has remained relatively stable over the past four years, at about 30 per year.

"These data suggest that if violent dispute-resolution is a common feature of organized crime, the landscape for this criminal activity has remained relatively constant," the report stated.

And figures collected by Statistics Canada suggest that gang-related killings make up a smaller share of murders in B.C. than in other parts of the country.

In 2006, just 12 per cent of B.C. murders were gang-related, compared to a national average of 17 per cent and a high of 27 per cent in Quebec.

Dandurand said gang killings can often appear to be on the increase because they typically come in spurts, a cycle of payback and retribution that can take awhile to calm down.

"If you're in a criminal organization and someone shoots one of your guys, there's no way you can leave that unpunished," he said. "If there's one gang assassination, [police] start preparing for the next one."

cskelton@png.canwest.com

PERCENTAGE OF HOMICIDES THAT WERE GANG-RELATED,* 2006

Que. 26.9%

Sask. 22.5%

Ab. 21.9%

Man. 17.9%

Ont. 14.3%

B.C. 12.0%

Atlantic 3.2%

CANADA 17.2%

* Includes cases both where police have "confirmed" that a homicide is gang-related and those in which the incident is "suspected" of being gang-related.

Source: Statistics Canada

[whampoa]

Credit to BCB..these guys are highly mobile and work in small groups..they have global connection so it's easy for them to move into a city and start offering big deals to local gangs/mafia. They dont have enough footmans to fight wars, they usually have other people fighting their battles.

If BCB are former Red Guards, that mean they still have some influence in mainland China. I won't be surprise if they are involved in nefarious activities in mainland Asia.

[st7860]

Authorities can't get rid of poster boy for gangsters

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=366f503f-9ea5-4e8c-bc58-ff1912c4f8ff
Nok Souvannarath, a Laotian immigrant ordered deported a dozen years ago, is a poster boy for gangsters in the Lower Mainland.

This 46-year-old has been convicted, imprisoned, ordered deported, denied his appeal and been charged again and again with drug and weapons offences.

But he remains in Canada.

NDP public safety critic Mike Farnworth is demanding Attorney-General Wally Oppal and federal Immigration Minister Diane Finley throw this guy out of the country.

But Oppal says we have to change our current laws to do that and he told me Wednesday he's going to raise that issue at the federal-provincial ministers' meeting next week.

"[Souvannarath's] circumstances are typical in many ways," the attorney-general said. "Once they get into this immigration mess we cannot get them out of the country. It takes so long for these cases to be processed."

But that's only part of the problem -- we need to keep track of them, too.

Souvannarath is one of many criminal immigrants who have been thumbing their noses at us.

We've adopted laws that strip suspected terrorists of rights to allow us to lock them up and expeditiously deal with them because of the threat they supposedly pose.

But we have failed to pass similar legislation to get rid of convicted gangbangers who have exhausted their appeals, ignore deportation orders and are charged with other crimes. We have created a system that critics rightly complain seemingly protects thugs rather than citizens.

Oppal said perhaps taking the same approach as we have to terrorism would work with gangsters who are not citizens.

"We have to start doing something about this issue," he insisted. "We have people who get convicted and then they stay in the country forever because the process [to get rid of them] is so slow."

Here is a brief history of Souvannarath, who is linked to the United Nations street gang.

He was ordered deported in April 1995. He appealed and his plea was rejected in 1996. Sergio Marchi, then the federal Liberal minister of immigration, considered him a public menace.

No kidding.

Souvannarath was a problem in Alberta since his arrival in Canada. I'm told he was a gang enforcer initially and was charged with assault in 1984 and pointing a firearm in 1987, but those allegations were dismissed.

Authorities finally nailed him in March 1994 in what Alberta police billed as the most successful undercover operation in history up until that time.

Over the course of the five-month operation, five kilos of cocaine with a street value of $750,000 were seized, along with several thousand dollars in cash, a sawed-off shotgun, an Uzi sub-machine gun and an AK-47 assault rifle. Some 200 trafficking charges were laid.

One of the key players in this sophisticated dope-dealing network, Souvannarath was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison on two counts of drug trafficking. He served less than a year and was released in August 1995.

Although the parole board thought he was being released "for deportation," according to the federal file, no one kicked him out.

He moved out of Edmonton and authorities basically lost track as far as I can tell. As with so many people ordered deported, no one followed up to make sure Souvannarath was sent on his way.

As a result, he took up where he left off -- he moved to B.C. and set up operations here.

In November 2005, he was charged again after police busted three drug houses in Abbotsford.

The homes -- in the 3600-block of Mt. Lehman Road and 3600-block of Fieldgate Street -- were supply centres for numerous mobile drug operations, police say.

Instead of being kept in jail, however, Souvannarath was freed on $50,000 bail.

In April of this year, his home was targeted in a drive-by shooting.

Then he was arrested again in August.

Police raided the house and seized an automatic AR-15 gun equipped with a suppressor and large capacity magazine, a 9-mm handgun, a .22-calibre Ruger rifle equipped with a scope and large quantities of ammunition, body armour, more than $20,000 in cash and cocaine.

What's wrong with this picture?

There's a lot wrong -- especially when you consider that like so many gangsters, Souvannarath has apparently confounded Canadian justice by simply moving from province to province.

His Edmonton lawyer didn't return my calls.

The Canada Border Services Agency, which handles deportations, won't comment -- Souvannarath has privacy rights.

Regardless, criminal proceedings take precedence so he can't be deported until they end.

Still, why let this guy walk around on bail?

He should be in the clink and when he is eligible to get out, he should be escorted directly to an airplane and returned to Laos.

Oppal agreed.

In August, he directed prosecutors to seek a review of Souvannarath's bail. Before that could happen, Souvannarath pleaded guilty to one of the federal drug charges and was sentenced to three months in jail.

Since he was in prison already, when the Crown applied to revoke his bail on Oct. 3, Souvannarath did not oppose the application.

We'll see what happens when his sentence runs out. I'm betting he reapplies for bail since his trial on the weapons charges is set for June 2008. Until then, he'll be living off Canadian taxpayers.

And who knows how long it will take to get him out of the country.

imulgrew@png.canwest.com

[YnD]

If BCB are former Red Guards, that mean they still have some influence in mainland China. I won't be surprise if they are involved in nefarious activities in mainland Asia.

They have been around forever.

http://www.alternatives.com/crime/vanbigc.html

At least they are not like the "malvern" and "jane-finch" gangs who get busted for everything.

[majesus]

I have no sympathy for gang members killing each other, but I have the biggest sorrow and grief for the innocent victims that get caught up because of retards.

On another note, I know I'm opening up a can of worms, but why don't we just legalize and regulate drugs? At least you can then control it.
It would take criminals out of business. I know there is tons of counter arguments. Go nuts but everyone knows it's easy to get drugs if you want to. In high school, isn't it easier to get pot then cigs? So why give the money to criminals?