Richards Story: A Life of Poverty, Crime, & Gangs

The man survived, but his gang was theirs. Daniel had an even more direct approach to conflict, Richard says. Although drive-by shootings were common in those days, Daniel thought they were "soft. After expanding across Winnipeg, the gang made its next breakthrough on the reserves.

In the remote communities of Canada's North, drugs sold for three to five times their price in the city. With almost universal unemployment and widespread despair, the market was insatiable. And as the Posse's brand grew, kids eagerly joined up. The people under him were expected to "kick up" 35 per cent of what they made selling drugs. He was also running the gang's prostitution business. Richard who was higher in the gang than Daniel at the time says he disapproved of prostitution, but the money was too good to pass up.

Of course, there were costs associated with all that income. Some was used to rent gang houses and set up a fund to pay defence lawyers. Richard admits he also had a weakness for gambling. But police say one of the puzzling aspects of the IP has been its inability to develop the more sophisticated techniques of traditional organized crime.

Gang Violence: CQR

No education to rely on for cash management," says Sergeant Mike MacKinnon of Winnipeg's organized-crime unit. They still live in the neighbourhoods they always lived in. Richard, who left the gang years ago, is quiet when asked where all the money went. Is there a Swiss bank account? He says they used to talk about investing in youngsters who could go to university and infiltrate the police force and the Crown's office. As with many organizations, recruiting and promoting the right people was a challenge. Daniel was one of the gang's top recruiters, but he complained in a prison letter to Richard in that there were "too many fucked-up people recruiting fucked-up people.

The ballad of Daniel Wolfe

IP recruits, Richard says, are often kids with disastrous home lives, out on the street late at night, looking for any place to belong. They might be tough enough to survive the initiation, but they bring their own baggage. It's better to find a smart kid: On the whole, street gangs occupy the bottom rung of the organized-crime pecking order.

They handle high-risk tasks such as street-level drug dealing and they pay steep prices to buy drugs from higher up the food chain. And even in the underworld, as at every other social level in Canada, natives are discriminated against, according to one study: They're relegated to less lucrative, less enduring criminal opportunities. Richard Wolfe settles into a booth at a Regina pizza place wearing dark glasses, and orders a small Hawaiian pizza.

In person, he is a large, imposing presence, though with a quiet demeanour. His extensive tattoos peek out from the sleeves of his black shirt, which is buttoned to the top in the style of a s Los Angeles gangster. Most young IP recruits start with a small tattoo on one hand, which they receive once they complete their first mission.

Richard has four shields tattooed near his neck. Three shields is the sign of a captain, someone with roughly 25 people under him. He won't say what four means. His personal downfall happened very quickly, he explains. Word went around in criminal circles that Richard had no credibility.

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His reputation was at stake. He called the pizza place and made an order for delivery: But he also decided to send a message: When the delivery car came, he ambushed it and opened fire. The driver survived, and Richard was arrested for attempted murder. Before the trial, Daniel tried to come to his big brother's rescue. He took a sawed-off shotgun to the homes of two witnesses, threatening to kill them if they testified.

They reported him and Daniel was sentenced to two years for attempting to obstruct justice. Richard got 19 years, an exceptionally long sentence for attempted murder. When he was led out of the courtroom, he recalls, a line of police stood and applauded. The shooting was stupid, he says now. Normally underlings handle debt collection. There were lots of people mad at me for that. Daniel served his time, then soon wound up back behind bars.

In , he went down for armed robbery, sentenced to eight years. Prison was nothing new for the Wolfe brothers. Daniel had first gone to jail in , aged 13, and averaged nearly a sentence a year until he turned Each time, he met people inside, and the force of his personality drew them to the Indian Posse.

It's no wonder recruitment was good: Aboriginal people make up 22 per cent of admissions to sentenced custody by numbers , despite being only 3 per cent of the population. They also make up 21 per cent of youth-gang members. By the late s, the Indian Posse had more than 1, members, perhaps as many as 3, And they weren't alone.

The other large aboriginal gangs — the Native Syndicate, primarily in Saskatchewan, and the Warriors in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba — had several hundred each. Prison officials tried to dilute the gang's influence in Manitoba jails by sending some IP members outside the province, including Richard and Daniel. But that only helped the gang expand nationally, first across the Prairies and then to B. Although the first IP members were all native, expansion brought cultural mixing. The first person to break the colour barrier was Ron Taylor, a black kid who knew the Wolfe brothers in Winnipeg.

His gang nickname used the N-word — affectionately, Richard claims. Taylor was murdered in prison in Richard says he had no problem with letting in non-natives. Daniel wasn't so sure. In a letter, he wrote, "Every other family's numbers are up except ours [so]we had to swallow some of our pride and open the door. So now we got white, black, might as well say all nations … Bro I never thought this would happen.

In the summer of , after Daniel was released from his latest round in prison, he moved to his mother's reserve, Okanese, just north of Fort Qu'Appelle, Sask. Police say he was on a recruiting mission. A few minutes later, two men kicked open the front door. One wore a red bandana over his face.

Jesse Obey was sitting on a couch directly in front of the door. All he saw was the gun barrel, he later testified. The first bullet went through his cheek and blew out his teeth. The next hit the left side of his torso. The shooter took a step past him to the bedroom, where Ms. Cook and several others were sitting. Sitting across from her, Michael Itittakoose's white hoodie exploded with red.

She scrambled to find the phone. One of the attackers yelled, "Shoot the old lady, she's calling the cops. Cook, and in a fraction of a second, her husband, Marvin Arnault, dove across the room and threw her to the ground. He asked if she was hurt. Cook replied, she was okay. Percy Pascal, a friend of the family, was shot nine times and somehow survived. Cordell Keepness took three bullets, including one through the hand. The gunman lowered his weapon and stepped toward the door.

He had fired more than 20 shots. Two people were dead, three others wounded. He was shocked by what he found. You could see that it had been hysteria in the house. People obviously ran all different directions," he says. Zentner and the rest of the team assembled to investigate the murders, the first step was figuring out what prompted it. They knew the gunman had mentioned the IP, Cpl. Pascal, who was in hospital recovering from his wounds, had a Native Syndicate tattoo on his face. It seemed clear that it was a gang shooting.

Witnesses told them that Mr. Pascal had exchanged words earlier that night with a man at a hotel bar. The man had a tattoo that said "Red 'til Dead," an Indian Posse slogan. There was an escalation of insults. Pascal asked the man if he knew that the IP and Native Syndicate were at war. It looked as though there would be a fight, but Mr.

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Pascal and company left. A bartender told police that he overheard the man say afterward, "They don't know what's coming for them. The RCMP now knew they were looking at an experienced criminal. Getting a conviction would be difficult. The investigators say they decided in January, , that they needed an undercover operation to extract a confession from Daniel: They arrested him and, while he sat in one police cruiser, another cruiser pulled up with an undercover officer handcuffed in the back seat.

The uniformed officer in front got out, opened the trunk and made a show of displaying a seized Uzi to his colleagues. Daniel was then brought inside and interviewed. The RCMP detective told him that Gerard Granbois, suspected of driving Daniel to the shooting scene, had already confessed what happened that night. Daniel said very little. The detective left the room. Daniel, who was being watched on video, immediately whipped around the desk to see what was on the laptop. He opened a file headed "Granbois Re-enactment" and watched several seconds of Mr.

Granbois's genuine video statement to police, in which he described the route they had taken the night of the murders. Daniel hurried back to his side of the desk when the detective returned. Later, he was taken to a two-person cell, which was already occupied by the undercover officer. The undercover told him he was a biker associate and that he was carrying some guns when he got pulled over. He asked what Daniel was in for. Roberto Saviano spent many years researching it and risked his life by writing it — he now has to live under armed guard. He looks at the many ways the Camorra has corrupted public life in this part of southern Italy.

He looks at the port, for example, where a lot of goods are smuggled in. He also writes about the garment industry and the illegal sweatshops the Camorra run in Naples, where they copy designer clothing. The violence they use is extraordinary, especially considering they are in a European country. I love his style. What links him to two other writers I have chosen — David Simon and Nick Davies — is that not only do they write extremely high quality pieces of investigative journalism, but all three are fuelled by an anger about injustice. As you say, this is the book that led to The Wire , which David Simon created.

The authors look at the area through the lives of the McCullough family — two drug-addict parents and their year-old son DeAndre. David Simon was a crime reporter for The Baltimore Sun for many years and worked closely with Ed Burns, who was a homicide and narcotics cop before becoming a teacher. This book shows how the drug trade recruits children, which is also a theme of my book. They bring these children to life with strong characterisation and the human details of their stories. These are children that are lost in this secret, oppositional world of the inner-city drug trade.

There are similarities between places like West Baltimore and inner cities in Britain. The recruitment of young kids into shotting — street dealing — is all-pervasive now. I was out with the cops in Moss Side and we came across some gang members shortly after a kid was shot dead. I asked one of them why he was doing what he was doing and he said: David Simon and Ed Burns capture the despair and hopelessness of these kids so well. In terms of structure, how do Italian mafia groups such as the Camorra differ from inner-city gangs found in Britain and the US?

The mafia is structured like a large corporate organisation in that it has its fingers in a lot of pies and runs a variety of business enterprises. The narcotics trade is a huge cash-based business and the money has to be laundered through these enterprises. The larger gangs with about members in Manchester have a hierarchical structure. At the top you have the generals, who command the three tiers below them. At the bottom you have boys as young as 10 or 11 who do the drudge work. So urban street gangs do have this slightly military structure.

Can you tell us what the code of the street actually is? The decent families believe in family values, provide their children with a supportive network and an accepted code of behaviour. To be respected in this environment you have to give the impression that you are capable of extreme violence quickly. In Britain, for example, people have pit bulls, prison muscle and tattoos. Giving the impression that you are capable of extreme violence is very important. The code of the street says that the moment you are disrespected you have to avenge that with violence.

If you combine this desperate search for respect with the hormonal nature of teenagers, you have a very explosive mix.

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Anderson puts the blame for this street culture on feelings of hopelessness and alienation in inner-city communities. Choices are massively influenced by peer groups. Quite often the influence of the older kids is very powerful, especially when there is no father around. Young boys are impressionable and are looking for role models. Mentoring as an early intervention gives these kids with behavioural difficulties a chance to have a decent role model for a period of time. Ex-offenders command huge respect among the kids and are able to turn them away from gang crime.

Group dynamics play a big part.

You get toxic groups of boys and young men. As you say, Nick Davies is a brilliant investigative journalist. Dark Heart is not so much about crime but about poverty, but he does show how they are linked. He was at a fairground in the centre of Nottingham and noticed two boys hanging around, whom he befriended. They take him on a very dark journey around the streets of Nottingham — one that involves child prostitutes, pimps, vice squads and drugs. The title Dark Heart has got echoes of Conrad. You go deeper and deeper into poverty.

Davies uses a quote from Henry Mayhew: The techniques police used were evolving -- using data to fight crime.

In , Chicago changed its approach to fighting violence , adopting a model similar to New York's CompStat program, which analyzes crime statistics to help determine where officers are needed most. Another approach was the department's Targeted Response Unit , which migrated from neighborhood to neighborhood, taking over gang turf where conflicts were flaring to reduce crime. In , Chicago police lead an effort to improve the underlying social conditions in communities with at-risk youth -- a novel public safety tactic. In Englewood, community leaders were praised for unifying neighbors through block parties, meetings and other gatherings.

Following several high-profile police scandals, Jody Weis -- an FBI veteran who became the first outsider named to head the tradition-bound department in more than 40 years -- was hired as Chicago police superintendent in A troubling rise in homicide in was followed by a drop in Donerson, 57, the mother of Oscar-winning singer Jennifer Hudson , was found shot to death in the living room of her Englewood home on Oct.

Her son, Jason Hudson, 29, was found dead in a bedroom. Donerson's grandson, Julian King, 7, was found dead several days later beneath a dirty shower curtain, resting lifeless on the rear seat of an abandoned white SUV. He was shot twice in the back of his head. Prosecutors said William Balfour was upset that his estranged wife, Hudson's sister, Julia, had begun seeing another man and wanted a divorce.

In , Balfour was found guilty on all counts of murder, home invasion, armed robbery and kidnapping, and is serving mandatory life in prison. He showed no emotion when the verdict was announced. The early s saw some of the lowest homicide totals in decades, but violence exploded in The city exceeded killings in The number of homicides in was lower, but still historically high. They blamed, in part, a perceived willingness by criminals to settle disputes with guns, and what they said is a failure on the part of the justice system to hold them accountable.

Now everyone picks up the gun. Many factors are behind the spike, including access to guns , the fracturing and factioning of street gangs , and poverty and disinvestment in the most effected communities. The decade was also chaotic and controversial for the Chicago Police Department. Police tactics and leadership changed dramatically. With Rahm Emanuel's election in , Garry McCarthy took over as superintendent and disbanded the Mobile Strike Force and the Targeted Response Unit over concerns that their aggressive styles further divided police and minority communities. The officers moved to beat patrols amid hopes of improving interactions with residents.

But that strategy appeared to backfire when homicides again exceeded in , leading McCarthy to reverse course by bolstering roving saturation teams and sharply boosting overtime pay so hundreds more officers could work the most dangerous neighborhoods. For more than a year, Emanuel fought the release of the video showing white police Officer Jason Van Dyke repeatedly shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald as he lay motionless in the street in October The release of the video in sparked widespread protests and exposed long-simmering grievances over policing in the city, particularly in minority communities.

McDonald's killing prompted a U. Emanuel fired McCarthy on Dec. In January -- in perhaps the most damning, sweeping critique ever of the Chicago Police Department -- the U. Department of Justice concluded that the city's police officers are poorly trained and quick to turn to excessive and even deadly force , most often against blacks and Latino residents, without facing consequences.

Emanuel agreed to enter into a court-enforced consent decree with President Barack Obama's Justice Department, but plans fell apart after Donald Trump took office. An out-of-court agreement with Trump's administration was attempted, and later Attorney General Lisa Madigan sued City Hall to enforce a consent decree. Emanuel has agreed to negotiate toward one.

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Homicides in fell by about 15 percent, but were still historically high. In an interview with the Tribune, Johnson cited new technology and tactics, and suggested that police relations with the community were improving. Dashcam video of white Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting McDonald, a black year-old, 16 times as he walked away from police near 41st Street and Pulaski Road while holding a knife caused a firestorm of controversy and led to calls for major reforms of the Police Department. The investigation unfolded like hundreds of others had before it, with an officer who claimed he fired in fear of his life , fellow cops who backed up his story and supervisors who quickly signed off on the case as a justifiable homicide.

The accounts of several officers dramatically differed from the video. City Hall refused to release the video until Nov. In March , Van Dyke was also charged with 16 counts of aggravated battery. Homicide figures for through were obtained from the Chicago Police Department via a Freedom of Information Act request returned Jan. The number of homicides could be different than data kept by the Chicago Tribune breaking news desk.

Police Department statistics do not include slayings on area expressways, police-involved shootings or other homicides in which a person was killed in self-defense or their deaths were still being investigated. Homicide rates were calculated using U.