whats this have to do with China you ask...

Police target drug trade in battle against Surrey’s violent crime

Eight search warrants executed and 56 arrests made in last three weeks, mayor says

BY MIKE HAGER, VANCOUVER SUN JANUARY 3, 2014

Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts, right, said she is pushing for more social services from the provincial government and that crime is still an issue with Surrey’s growing population.

Photograph by: DARRYL DYCK , THE CANADIAN PRESS

METRO VANCOUVER -- With criticism over Surrey’s murder rate reaching a crescendo after the beating death of 53-year-old mother in Newton, Mayor Dianne Watts detailed Friday how police have targeted the drug trade on the advice of her special task force on violent crime.

Newton and Whalley now have 49 more officers that have redeployed from other duties to crack down on the drug houses and drug dealers often linked to violent crime in the city, Watts said.

“When we identify the causal factors of the murders (in 2013), most of them — 18 — are from a high-risk lifestyle,” Watts said. “So, we needed to interrupt the activity of the (Dial-A-Dope) lines, of the drug dealers and any comfort they may have felt in any area of the city.”

In the past three weeks, eight search warrants have been executed at drug houses and 56 arrests have been made, while six vehicles were seized, Watts added.

Surrey created headlines last month after a record 25 homicides were recorded in 2013, the last of which was the shocking beating death of Julie Paskall.

Paskall was severely beaten, with what investigators believe may have been a rock, during a robbery Sunday around 9:30 p.m. as she waited to pick up her teen son outside the Newton Arena. She died Tuesday after her family decided to pull her off life support, launching an intensive police murder investigation and leaving the community in a state of shock.

Watts said Friday that lighting and sight lines are being reviewed at the facility and the dark grove of trees nearby will be cut down. Security and volunteer foot patrols of the facility have also been stepped up.

After Paskall’s death, Newton community groups decried what they saw as the displacement of crime to their neighbourhood after the gentrification of nearby Whalley. Watts said during the development of the area now known as Central City, her government worked with the provincial social service providers to tackle issues such as homelessness and addiction.

“We identified that we would not want to have any of the social issues that Whalley had to go into any other community, whether it was Guildford, whether it was Newton or Cloverdale,” Watts said.

Still, she said she is pushing for more social services from the provincial government and that crime is still an issue with Surrey’s growing population.

University of the Fraser Valley criminologist and Surrey task force member Irwin Cohen said residents of crime-plagued Newton can help clean up their community by calling the police any time they see an illegal or criminal act.

Studies show that victims of crime often don’t phone police because they think either the matter is too petty or that police “can’t or won’t do anything about it,” Cohen said.

“Both those reasons are pretty tragic,” he said. “Anytime you’re a victim of any type of crime, to think that ‘it’s not that big a deal, no one will care, I won’t bother’ — (it) is not a great attitude to have.”

Community groups are also part of the equation and can come together to form organizations like block watches to bolster public safety, he added.

Next Monday the Newton Community Association is doing just that, by holding a 7 p.m. meeting at the Newton Seniors Centre so residents can raise concerns about crime and work on solutions.

Meanwhile, a trust fund under the name “Paskall Family Trust” has been set up at all Vancity Credit Union branches for members of the public to help the slain mother’s surviving four family members.

The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team has no suspects and no witnesses to Paskall’s attack.

Chinese authorities deployed helicopters, speedboats and paramilitary police to seize three tons of methamphetamine in a massive raid on a single southern village notorious for illegal drugs production.

Security forces surrounded and then entered the village of Boshe, where more than a fifth of the households were suspected to be involved in or linked to the production and trafficking of drugs, Guangdong province's police force said on its website.

Police and paramilitary forces from four cities were mobilized in Sunday's raid and they arrested 182 suspects who worked for 18 large drug-making rings, the statement late Thursday said. No blood was shed, it said.

"The village has made a criminal drug production a 'clanbased, industrialized operation with local protection,' " police said.

"The offenders have for a long time been brazenly committing crimes, avoiding investigations and even ganging up to violently oppose law enforcement," the statement said. China routinely carries out operations targeting illicit drug rings but it's unusual for such wide-ranging law enforcement resources to be deployed at once against a single village.

An aerial photo posted on the police website showed dozens of police vans parked in rows outside a walled village of densely built old houses with traditional-style peaked, tiled roofs. Another photo showed a helicopter taking off and another one parked nearby. Speedboats were sent to prevent suspects from fleeing the coastal village by sea.

The Yangcheng Evening News, a local newspaper, says the raid involved 3,000 police officers who seized three tons of methamphetamine in the raid.

Photos showed paramilitary officers in camouflage uniforms and holding rifles stood over large boxes filled with large packets of what is presumably crystal meth.

Boshe's villagers have resisted Chinese authorities for years, blockading the village entrance with motorcycles when word of a raid spread. The villagers would brandish replica AK-47s, lay nail boards on the road and hurl rocks and homemade grenades at officers, said the paper based in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province. The paper said police first captured the village party secretary who allegedly was protecting the drug operations from authorities. Other officials captured included the local police chief and other police officers.

Calls to police at the provincial and local levels rang unanswered Friday

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