Drug gangs turn to torture in B.C. city: police

The turf war over the drug trade in Prince George, B.C., is taking a new, more violent turn, police say, including gunfights and the use of torture to extract payment from indebted users.

On Wednesday, rival gangs conducted a running gun battle on a downtown street as shoppers scrambled for cover.

Three gangs — the Independent Soldiers, the Renegades and the Crew — are involved, police said Thursday, with the newest arrivals, the Soldiers, believed responsible for some particularly violent incidents.

In a recent raid on a "crack shack" — the term police are using to describe dilapidated buildings where drug deals are made — officers discovered a man shackled to a basement wall who had been beaten and tortured, RCMP Const. Lesley Dix said, adding this was not the first incident of its kind to come to the attention of authorities.

"We've had a number of victims approach us and advise us that they were assaulted, beaten with weapons, tortured, because of money the owed — as little as $100," Dix said.

Details about the shackled man were not disclosed because the case is important and sensitive, and part of a pattern, Dix told the Prince George Citizen.

"We have a number of forcible confinement charges awaiting approval and this incident was being added to those charges," she said.

"They are connected through the organized crime drug trade and we could be dealing with some of the same players in some of the charges that are pending, and they are all connected to the Independent Soldiers."

The torturing, she told the paper, "is their way — with this extortion and kidnapping and beating — to show who is boss and to make them an example if they don't pay or if they steal from each other.

"When you are shackled in the basement of a building, you could imagine the fear of not knowing when the torture will end. The psychological fear is something that is used on the victim."

Most of the victims of torture are not gang members but "sons and daughters with loving families," she said.  

Public at risk

The recent shooting incident makes it apparent the gang violence is escalating to the point it could put the general public at risk, officials said.

City officials, in conjunction with the Mounties, are using bylaw infractions as a pretext to go in and shut down the crack shacks.

But Coun. Don Zurowski said the tactic, while effective in some ways, leads to new difficulties.

"The RCMP felt they certainly had success with their focus on crack shacks," he said.

"But again, it causes some other things to happen, such as trafficking in parking lots. They move to cellular phones and trafficking in parking lots."