Pubdate: Fri, 29 Mar 2013
Source: Prince George Citizen (CN BC)
Copyright: 2013 Prince George Citizen
Contact:  http://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/350
Author: Frank Peebles

BACON BROTHERS BOOK SHINES LIGHT ON PRINCE GEORGE GANGS

A new book on Canada's colourful, tragic organized crime underworld
has cast more light on Prince George than perhaps any other.

Jerry Langton's latest title The Notorious Bacon Brothers focuses on
the damage caused by the infamous Lower Mainland family gang, both to
themselves, many levels of victims, and to the B.C. economy.

Many lines are drawn by Langton between the Lower Mainland drug trade
and the Prince George drug trade, as well as other B.C. communities.
The murder of Hells Angels puppet club president Billy Moore (head of
the Renegades Motorcycle Club); the duo-killing of gang affiliates
Garret McComb and Brittany Giese; and the homicide by arson of Linda
Fredin, mother-in-law of Game Tight Soldiers member Joey Arrance, are
all discussed in the book.

"In a book like this there is always the particular and the general,"
said Langton. "The particular is the Bacon Brothers but the general is
how the drug trade has affected British Columbia communities all over.
It is like night and day compared to a few years ago."

Although the massive series of violent events that painted the early
2000s in blood have dwindled from the headlines, Langton urges the
public to disbelieve the gang wars are over. He has written 10 books
and works on the editorial staff of the Toronto Star, much of his
attention focused on Canadian organized crime. His experience tells
him the drug trade is just as deadly and economically crippling now as
it was when brazen violence was erupting on the B.C. streets,
including Prince George, in broad daylight only a few years ago.

"As long as gangsters kill other gangsters, nobody seems to mind very
much but when innocent bystanders are killed or seriously injured,
that's when people seem to act," he said. "Whenever you have sides,
and one is weak, it wants to assert itself. The Hells Angels still
dominate the drug trade in B.C. and they really make it difficult for
small-time traffickers and growers, they are too demanding and impose
a lot of rules. People [on the wrong side of the law] resist that and
band together and pick at the Hells Angels. That causes conflict. That
conflict is going on right now."

What happened to the Bacon Brothers, he said, is indicative of the
Canadian organized crime profile as a whole. Young, unscrupulous
people were attracted to a life of easy money, lavish possessions,
sexual preening, and a mystique of power and lack of consequences. One
by one they were attacked, murdered and imprisoned as were their
associates and a lot of their rivals. The glamour was fake.

"You see places like Prince George where a lot of youth saw gang life
as an appealing career choice," he said. "When someone with a high
school education rolls up in a luxury car and girls available and
spends what you think is a lot of cash, that turns some heads. That is
still going on but it was a real movement when the Bacon Brothers were
starting out, and gangs were developing like the Red Scorpions and the
UN Gang and the Independent Soldiers and the Game Tight Soldiers. What
you're seeing now - and it is why I focused on the Bacon Brothers - is
people idolized because of the gangster lifestyle are now showing the
reality of what that lifestyle eventually means: pain, fear, prison,
torture, murder inflicted on you. I think young people are noticing
this."

The speedy rise and fall of the Bacon Brothers (and many others) did a
lot of human and economic damage that is still underway, said Langton.
Communities can look at the new book as a how-to manual for
recognizing the signs of what gangs can do, but also give hope that
opposing their activities is possible and positive results can happen.
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D