Just hours after Ottawa police decided Monday to beef up the investigative arm of its anti-gang unit to deal with a record number of shootings, officers responded to the city’s second report of gunfire in less than 24 hours.
Patrol officers were on scene near Bloomsbury Crescent and Regency Terrace, in the Woodroffe Avenue-Baseline Road area, late Monday afternoon after a man was hit twice in a volley of shots fired in a drive-by shooting.
And just as a Monday morning shooting victim had, the latest victim took a taxi to hospital, leaving police to search the area around a white sedan with a bullet-riddled driver’s side door that had crashed into a garbage bin.
The shooting — the city’s 48th of the year — punctuated a day of meetings prompted by mainly gang-related and targeted shootings that have spiked in recent weeks. Days before year’s end, police were swamped with open investigations, unco-operative victims, and searches for suspects who seem to have little reluctance to resort to gunfire.
The force previously added officers to its Direct Action Response Team (DART), which works to suppress gang activity through surveillance and monitoring. Officers from the drug unit and a surveillance team were on loan after the city hit 45 shootings in mid-December.
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Now, the guns and gangs unit will receive additional investigators from other units for what’s expected to be a short-term plan of action.
“The organization has recognized that this is a serious problem and we are stepping up to help each other out,” said Acting Staff Sgt. Ken Bryden of the guns and gangs unit.
The decision came smack in the middle of Monday’s two gang-related and targeted shootings, the latest in gunplay plaguing the city despite near-weekly meetings among politicians, police and community organizations.
In the early hours of Monday, a known Crips gang member, bleeding from a bullet wound to his back, had climbed into a taxi and asked to be taken to hospital. The driver took him to The Ottawa Hospital’s General campus, while police were notified.
Police suspect that shooting was the culmination of a knife fight that broke out at a house party in the early morning hours of Christmas Eve in which that same victim was stabbed.
Police believe that both the victim and the alleged shooter were inside City Night Club at 222 Slater St. prior to the gunfire. The club was the site of a 2012 stabbing. Its Facebook page shows a promotional flyer for “Rewind Sundays” specializing in hip hop and old-school with $85 bottles and $4 jagerbombs.
The victim is alleged to be a well-known gang member who pleaded not guilty to Gatineau drug trafficking charges in 2009 alongside co-accused Adil Omer, who would later be the main target in a months-long guns-and-gangs probe called Project Apache. The trafficking charges came after 19-year-old Daniel Valladares was shot dead outside the Cabaret Le Pink strip club in Aylmer.
Investigators don’t believe that Monday’s shootings are related to each other but rather are the result of infighting between cells of two different criminal street gangs. The morning incident near Bank and Slater streets is also not believed to be related to the Boxing Day shooting at Tanger Outlets mall that left another Crips gang associate with a wound to his foot from a .40-calibre bullet.
He was sent to hospital and refused to co-operate with police. Two people were arrested but later released without charges. Two more were still being sought.
Monday afternoon’s shooting appeared to be related to an ongoing dispute between those with ties to west-end Bloods.
Regardless of gang colours, Coun. Eli El-Chantiry, chair of the Ottawa Police Services Board, is appealing to the families and loved ones of those involved in the rash of shootings to come forward and help police to stop the violence before an innocent passerby killed, a concern that police, too, have increasingly voiced in the past several weeks.
He said one of the biggest issues police have in investigating gang-related violence is the reluctance of those involved, including victims, to co-operate. A victim has the right not to co-operate with police in an investigation, El-Chantiry said, and victims in the recent spate of gun violence have exercised that right.
“Don’t tell me that nobody knows who they are,” El-Chantiry said. “They have mothers and fathers, wives and girlfriends.
“Why aren’t those people coming forward?”
Police say that they are making a difference, despite the increasing frequency of gunplay. They have confiscated 50 handguns and charged 80 people for gang-related activity so far this year. But their moves to bolster units hasn’t curbed the violence.
El-Chantiry said its clear that police are working to address the issue, but the recent spike in gun violence is very concerning.
“Why do we have so many handguns on the streets of Ottawa?” El-Chantiry asked. “And, how are they getting into the city?”
— With files from Shannon Lough
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