Punjabi forum tonight in Abbotsford to address gangs
Posted May 12, 2017 12:02 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
ABBOTSFORD (NEWS 1130) – Police in Abbotsford are trying to make inroads into the community before young people get involved with a life of crime.
“What we’ve ended up with is young members of a gang are often still living in their parents home and there are other young people being drawn up into these gangs getting ‘street cred’ if they’re seen in the company of these people,” says Abbotsford Police Chief Bob Rich. “What we need is this community to be aware of that, to understand the nature of the conflict and what they can do to keep their kids away from gangs.”
The forum will be at the WJ Mouat Secondary School at 7:00 pm.
Rich says this forum will be focused on the Southeast Asian community.
“What we want to meet with the community. Speak to them in their own language, those who are comfortable in Punjabi and we want to offer up that we will come into their homes and talk to them about what’s going on with their young sons. We’ll talk about their daughters too, but this is predominantly this is their sons (getting involved with gangs).”
Rich says the point of campaigns like this is to stop kids from even joining up with gangs.
“We are not going to be very successful with the kids who have established themselves in the gangs. The focus of this forum and the focus of our work when it comes to intervention right now is with the 16-year-old who has been seen riding with these kids or, we understand from our youth squad people, that this guy is being recruited.”
