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Union, port decline comment on crime report

There are many questions and no answers forthcoming following an explosive series on criminal activity at Metro Vancouver ports.

The four-part series from the Vancouver Sun outlines how criminal organizations have infiltrated the ports of Metro Vancouver, and delves into how groups like the Hells Angels gain access.

The newspaper’s investigation found at least 27 members of the Hells Angels, club affiliates, convicted criminals and other known gangsters work at Metro Vancouver ports.

“The infiltration of gangsters and criminals into the port workforce is perpetuated by a longtime employment practice that allows existing union members to nominate friends, relatives and associates when new jobs become available,” the newspaper reports in the first part of the series.

Bill Tieleman, a communications consultant to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union of Canada, which represents dock workers, tells Yahoo Canada the organization has no comment on the series at this time.

Vancouver Sun reporter Kim Bolan spoke to police gang experts, RCMP and Port Metro Vancouver. She also uncovered a trio of internal reports from police and Canada Border Services Agency going back two decades that discuss the drug smuggling problem. They all link the criminal activity to the Hells Angels.

Det.-Staff. Sgt. Len Isnor, an Ontario Provincial Police officer and the country’s top law enforcement expert on the Hells Angels, told the Sun that the group has maintained a foothold in Canada’s three largest ports — Vancouver, Montreal and Halifax — for the past 30 years.

“So as far as the ports are concerned, it’s the whole success of the Hells Angels,” he told the newspaper.

Port Metro Vancouver did not respond to a request for comment from Yahoo Canada News.

Transport Canada did not respond to a request for comment.

Julian Sher, author of several books on organized crime and the senior producer at CBC’s The Fifth Estate, has investigated the Hells Angels presence at Canadian ports for more than a decade.

“It’s clear that the government and the port authorities and the union continue to be wilfully blind over this,” Sher tells Yahoo Canada News.

That blindness is short-sighted.

“What the series points out is that if criminals can use it to bring in drugs, then other criminals can use it to bring in stuff even more dangerous than drugs,” he says.

“If you wanted to bring in not just drugs, but a nuclear device, or anything, why wouldn’t you use a well-known, well-oiled smuggling machine brought to you by the hells Angels or other criminal gangs?”

In the second part of the series, the Sun cites encrypted messages intercepted by police between a Vancouver man and the Ontario-based leader of an international drug ring to illustrate how easily drugs can be smuggled through the Vancouver port.

The third instalment delves into the criminal histories of two convicted drug smugglers and members of two Metro Vancouver locals of the International Longshoremen and Warehouse Union.

The final part of the series looks at the sponsorship process within the ILWU that may perpetuate criminal influence on the docks.

The newspaper identifies numerous full-patch Hells Angels that were or are members, including a man now in jail in Montreal awaiting trial for his alleged role in an international cocaine smuggling scheme.

Sher says the underlying problem is a conflict of interest within ports when it comes to greater security and surveillance.

“Ports are the business of moving the largest amount of imported goods in the fastest way possible to the most destinations. That’s how they make their money,” he says.

“So any kind of security measures that would be needed to better track the shipments - constant security checks, more police presence – all that stuff would help fight the drug trade but it’s going to slow your business.”

There have been improvements – more background checks, for example – but the fundamental conflict remains, Sher says.

“The people who run the ports – the government, the politicians and the businesses – just have to decide to invest in the necessary measures that it’s going to take to fight crime. If not, then your port is not just bringing in grain and cars and everything else. It’s bringing in crime.”