 Good morning everybody and thank you for coming. My name is Sergeant Jason Robillard, I'm a media relations officer with the Vancouver Police Department. We're here today to announce Task Force tourniquet. This is a proactive combined BC police task force that has targeted lower mainland crime groups. Behind me we have some speakers here today, Superintendent Mike Portius from the Vancouver Police Department, Acting Chief Brian Gately, CFSUBC. Staff Sergeant Lisa Byrne will also be speaking. She's from VPD. She was a team commander. We have Superintendent Brian Edwards from the RCMP Lower Mainland District available for questions afterwards. This really was a combined effort from several lower mainland municipal police agencies and RCMP detachments. These are included the Abbotsford Police Department, the Delta Police Department, New West Minister Police Department, Port Moody Police Department, West Vancouver Police Department, the Burnaby RCMP, CFSUBC, Coquitlam RCMP, IHIT, Langley RCMP, North Vancouver RCMP, RCMP Lower Mainland District, Richmond RCMP and the Surrey RCMP. I will be available after for unrelated questions after today's announcement has been concluded. This is including last night's homicide. We'll have other guests available for questions and if you could please save your questions, we'll have the guests have completed speaking. As you can see we have some exhibits here as well. It's over $800,000 in Canadian currency and cash, over $800,000 worth of jewelry, artwork and a Desert Eagle gold plated 44 Magnum pistol. I'm going to turn it over to Superintendent Mike Portius from the Vancouver Police Department. Thank you. Good morning everybody. I'm just going to make some brief comments about this task force and the project territory and I'll be available for questions later as well the other speakers. I'm here today to announce the charges in project territory, a 17 month investigation into the Kang Lattaber organization. Project territory falls under the umbrella of task force Ternike, which as Jason mentioned is a multi-agency team that's been dedicated to combating gang violence in the region since March of 2017. I can now confirm that previous news releases such as project tariff, temper and treachery that we spoke about in the past are all related to task force Ternike with project territory being the latest and arguably the biggest success. In total task force Ternike has charged 34 individuals all gang members and all gang associates with 201 offenses. In project territory itself, which is a subset of the task force, there have been 92 charges laid against 14 individuals who belong to the Kang and Lattaber organization and or the Red Scorpions Gang and you can see some Red Scorpions references on both sides of me. Project territory represents a significant and I would say one of the largest that I've seen in my career disruption to the ongoing gang violence in the region. The Kang Lattaber organization was known to be in conflict with the Brothers Keepers group, the Sandu Sidhu group and other crime groups in the Lower Mainland. As a result of that we had an ongoing violent conflict. Multiple shootings and murders in the region are attributed to the conflict and the Kang Lattaber group that the Kang Lattaber group has been participating in over the over the past few years. Charged in territory are Kyle Lattaber, 27 years, Semeet Kang, 26 years, Gary Kang, 22 years, Craig Lattaber, the father of Kyle, 55 years, Songar Zooks, 29 years, and Dooley Piquiento, 22 years, Jacob Pereira, 25 years, Vitesh Gag or Vitesh Vag, 37 years, Christopher Gouman, a 21 year old, Pashminder Bhoperi, 29 years, Manvir Brake, 30 years, Ranbir Kang, 48 years, Mohanvir Kang, 50 years, Gujarin Kang, 68 years. There's also several unindicted co-conspirators which include Jamie Bacon, Cody Havasher, Amandip Matu, Ranjeev Ajula, Girvinder Randhawa, Abhishek Lohia, Dilraj Gill, Omid Mashinshi, and Jason Deep Opal. The types of charges that include, and this is significant, this is from my memory only the second time the Vancouver Police Department has ever charged for a criminal organization type offenses, the commission of an offense for a criminal organization, instructing commission of offense for a criminal organization, participating in activities of a criminal organization, conspiracy to commit trafficking in a controlled substance, trafficking in a controlled substance, possession of, for the purposes of trafficking, possession of explosive devices with intent, possession of an explosive device in association with a criminal organization, possession of two prohibited firearms, possession of 22 prohibited firearms, possession of 19 restricted firearms, 14 silencers or prohibited devices and possession of proceeds of crimes, over $5,000. In project territory, the task force is seized, 93 firearms, you can see them detailed to my right in the photographs, over 16,000 rounds of ammunition, 59 prohibited devices such as silencers and over capacity magazines for automatic weapons, one pressure cooker improvised explosive device, approximately 10 kilograms of fentanyl, 40 kilograms of cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin, about $830,000 which are displayed here in Canadian currency, approximately $800,000 specifically in red scorpion design jewelry which is also displayed and approximately $350,000 in collector cards which are over to my right. I'll leave it at that for now and I'll turn it over to acting chief Gaitley of the combined forces special enforcer unit of British Columbia. Thank you Mike, thank you and good morning everyone. My name is Brian Gaitley, I'm a superintendent with the RCMP and I'm currently the acting chief officer for the combined forces special enforcement unit in British Columbia. CFSUBC as British Columbia's integrated and anti-gang police unit which brings together police officers and civilian staff from every police agency in the province. The almost 500 highly dedicated and specialized members of our unit are focused on one thing, to target, disrupt, and hold accountable those people and groups who are responsible for gang related violence in BC. To achieve this we are involved and engaged in operations and investigations across the entire province, independent of and in conjunction with our policing partners. We also coordinate all gang intelligence for the province under the Provincial Tactical Enforcement Priority Initiative. PTAP as it's known is an integrated province-wide intelligence led targeting process that identifies individuals associated to gangs and organized crime. The gang landscape in the province of British Columbia involves criminality that spans across communities and jurisdictions, resulting in the need for a strategic, coordinated, and integrated approach by all levels of enforcement which you'll hear about today. This ensures much like this in this investigation we are targeting the right people and we are unified in our efforts against the main threats in our province. Additionally through PTAP the province provides dedicated funds to PTAP related investigations such as project territory. Successes like what you're going to hear about today cannot be achieved without strong collaboration, significant amount of coordination, and high levels of communication. CFSUBC as we've seen in many previous joint investigations has the ability not only to bring resources and specific skill sets to the table but we also because of our integrated unit have the ability to coordinate with our many policing partners. We know that in complex long-term files across numerous jurisdictions this is critical if there's going to be any success. In this case it's meant an increased ability for officers from every agency involved in the investigation to have access to real-time actionable intelligence. It ensures that the information is shared that mitigates any risk to the public and to the police and appropriate deep confliction occurs so that agencies aren't putting investigations at risk. The Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit of British Columbia is committed to continuing our support of our policing partners in our collective fight against gangs and the violence that organized crime groups cause in our communities in the province. Thank you. Thanks Chief Gaitley. My name is Staff Sergeant Lisa Byrne and I'm the team commander for Task Force Ternache and specifically for project territory as well. I've been the team commander for this all of these investigations for approximately a year and a half now and I'm just here today to speak to you about a couple trends that my team and myself have noticed with respect to gang involvement and the facilitation of gang activity in the lower mainland. The first trend that I want to highlight is our gang members are subletting high-end rental properties. They're doing this because these properties contain security features which they believe keeps them safe mostly from rival gangs. These are often towers either in the downtown cores of various cities, Surrey, Vancouver, Richmond or other buildings throughout the region and high-end properties in north and west Vancouver. The management companies that are facilitating this they specialize in this purpose and they are specializing in providing properties for gang members. Short-term rentals are being used, they're being rented by one person typically the management company and then subletted to the gang members often without the owners even knowing that this is occurring. One management company rented to several different groups who were in conflict with each other. My team found this particularly disturbing because we had rival gang members housed within dozens of meters of one another and the potential for spontaneous violence and gunplay was obviously something that was super concerning for us when we saw this happening. The activities that we've also observed in these rentals include the processing of fentanyl and the cooking of dangerous controlled substances, storage of firearms and an explosive device which is pictured right over to my right, storage of cash and drugs that the gang members were using to store in their stash houses and parties that rival or that gang members went to. Several of these parties are also linked to violent events where drive-by shootings occurred, assaults occurred and murders occurred. The second thing that I did want to talk about that we have noticed as sort of a general observation from the team over the last year and a half is parental involvement. As you can see from the indictment we have three parents who are actually charged with participating in a criminal organization in this investigation. Moen Veer and Gerchar and Kang and Craig Latimer are parents of some of the accused and they've been charged with participating in this criminal organization. Outside of these three individuals and over the broad spectrum of all of the projects that we have run over the last year and a half we have noticed that parental involvement at times can be anywhere ranging from being complicit into their activities, willfully blind of their children's activities or completely unaware of their children's activities. In order to start to combat this gang violence problem enforcement is not the only thing that the police departments are doing. Parental engagement is necessary to assist in preventing gang involvement. There's examples of programs such as VPD's Gang Tackle, CFSCUBC's End Gang Life and two VPD supported programs Her Time and Yo Bro and Yo Girl. These are excellent resources for parents who wish to be educated about gang activity or who are seeking exit strategies for their children who are involved in gang activity. That's all I have and I'll turn it over to Sergeant Robillard for questions. Thank you. We'll turn it over to some questions now. You can just address the panel if you'd like if you have questions. I can tell you right now that I can't actually speak to specifics about what the charges entail and the evidence that leads up to it. We'll actually have to wait for court for that because it is an ongoing prosecution and I can't speak to that today. What I can say in general terms is I have as recent as yesterday worked with the real estate board and other agencies of enforcement that can actually start to tackle that problem now that we're in a position that charges have been laid and can share information with other enforcement agencies. The only one who has been released so far I believe is the mother of the Kang's Mohan Veer. Everyone else remains in custody. They were arrested starting on the 7th of August and up until yesterday one person does remain outstanding and Duly Pikyanto has not yet been arrested. I think it's very significant and my hope is that it will have an incredible impact on the gang violence that we're seeing in the Lower Mainland. As the superintendent mentioned these these two groups were in conflict with multiple groups in the Lower Mainland. The Brothers Keepers who they used to be partners with and split from and obviously the original conflict that the entire group was involved in with the Sandu City group out of the valley as well as one off conflicts here and there and they also have conflict in jail so I think this could have a significant impact on the region's violence. Yeah I don't think it's not the gang it's they're not gang charges and it's not the first time. The first time actually back when I was an inspector and that was on the Swallow Group downtown and that was the first time the bank for police department were involved in organized crime charges. It's a rare charge in British Columbia. I don't know off the top of my head how many there are but there's not a lot of them. It's very difficult charge to prove. It's very very complex and this is the second time we've ever done it but this is more wide sweeping more accused. The Public Prosecution Service of Canada has been a partner throughout this and they've assisted the police in the laying of these types of charges which if convicted of course everybody's innocent till proven guilty. However if they are convicted they'd be looking at significant probably double digit years of jail time for these types of offenses. Well that's a sweeping comment by myself but I think generally speaking if you're convicted of it all depends on all of the sentencing principles but it's more than the regular type charges we see the kind of sentences for these types of offenses the court's treated very very seriously because they are specifically with intent involved in criminal activity for the benefit of a criminal organization which is really is a danger to society as a whole. The team commander staff sergeant Byrne is a hundred percent accurate she knows about this file and and the has her finger on the pulse of gang violence the reason I would wholeheartedly agree with her that this is a mitigating factor we have actually as we've conducted arrests and interdictions throughout we've conducted several interdictions where people were on their way to kill people and we are charging them what we'll be charging them with that that we are seeing a down tick a significant down tick as we've seen before this type of tactic works chief chief gately referred to the provincial tactical enforcement priorities this type of strategy works in mitigating violence and we're seeing a down tick I just looked at the statistics in Vancouver recently and we're down somewhere like 40 percent for gang for shootings since the investigation started because as I referred to this as a task force that we've done other interdictions coming up to this that I believe have mitigated gang violence and the incarceration of these individuals should continue that trend specifically some of the people in there are incarcerated yes like for example Mr. Bacon is in custody as an unindicted co-conspiracer he would be involved in this type of criminality and that speaks to what he's what he's up to we have a history of being able to stop people from being involved in gang violence and I anticipate that we'll be able to continue that trend in the future I remember years ago when I was a homicide detective my sergeant saying to me there's no price on public safety this is expensive there's a lot of resources we we called together some at its peak some 45 full-time investigators from across the region and the cost of policing is is not cheap however it's difficult to put the price on a human life and we saved several lives and we will continue to do so and so you kind of asked a question and then answered it but the I'm in my experience if people are in jail they're less likely to commit violence on the street so yes that would be a logical conclusion the crown has to abide by the law and and where there's a danger to the public that's a significant factor and what the the judge will consider and upon their release and as Staff Sergeant Byrne has stated previously almost all of them except the mom have been been held in custody so far I think I will defer to Staff Sergeant Byrne on that so I can just speak in general terms about that because obviously there there is active investigations going on with respect to all the seized firearms but over the course of the entire task force not just project territory we did seize 120 firearms approximately half of those guns are non-restricted and when I spoke to the people at the national weapons enforcement team they advised me that approximately 65% of the firearms seized in Canada are actually locally sourced or home home fire Canadian firearms that are either purchased by straw purchasers someone who will purchase multiple firearms and then resell them on the street or stolen and targeted break and enters so at that point that's all I can say about where the guns are from it coming from is just the stats that were provided to me yet it is a very concerning device obviously you can see it in the photo that's about all I can unfortunately share with you who had it and what it was intended for as part of the ongoing investigation will be part of the prosecution so I can't speak to that unfortunately hi good morning uh there regarding your question there's no question this investigation and taking out the Kang's and the red scorpions through uh Calatimer is going to leave a void but I think we have a pretty good understanding of the competing groups that are operating within the province here I think what's very important as well is that through p-tap and meeting with senior leaders in municipal departments and rcmp detachments we're able to strategically move our resources and our funding in order to go after the most significant targets at the time and this is a really efficient effective way of going after organized crime in the province here yeah I would say Calatimer is one of the senior leaders for sure in the red scorpions okay thanks your questions if you have any more questions for the panel before we call it okay thank you so much