Spike in summer gun violence near elementary schools raises concerns...
A city councillor in Fort St. John, B.C., says the province needs to make it easier and faster for cities to seize properties linked to gangs and violent crime.
It comes after two targeted drive-by shootings near local elementary schools in recent weeks, where bullets have hit several homes and vehicles and injured one suspect.
Fort St. John RCMP said investigators are working to identify more suspects and focusing resources to address the spike in gun violence.
But after the latest early morning shooting on Aug. 6, Coun. Trevor Bolin says residents started contacting him about problems they had been seeing for years in the neighbourhood.
"We're past the level where people can now still feel comfortable on their streets," said Bolin.
"Families are more cautious and questioning, what is the city and the RCMP and the province and the Crown doing to ensure that their kids feel safe walking to school?"
B.C. municipalities can already make orders against derelict and other nuisance and unsightly properties, including demolition.
Bolin says cities should have similar powers when properties are repeatedly linked to drugs, gangs or shootings.
"[That's] even more of a danger than one that doesn't have its windows or has its doors broken in," Bolin said.
"You don't deserve to own that home. You don't deserve to rent that home to the people causing these issues. Under that case, I fully believe we should take that home."
Bolin says the province's current process for seizing criminal assets can take years through the courts and isn't always successful.
"Taking two to four years to resolve some things isn't the answer," he said. "It's time that the municipality has the teeth to deal with it once and for all."
But the B.C. Civil Liberties Association says handing provincial powers over to city halls could cause unintentional and unfair outcomes for otherwise innocent people. "Fairness takes time. Municipalities or even the province could probably do these cases faster. But could they do it faster and still retain fairness? I don't think so." says litigation director Vibert Jack.
Jack says the association is concerned that B.C.'s current civil forfeiture regime is already designed without the same legal protections for people charged with a crime, such as the presumption of innocence.
Unexplained wealth orders have gone further to reverse protections and presume guilt, he said.
"The system is designed really to tilt the playing field in favour of the state to get to the result that they want and work quickly," said Jack.
"We need things like the presumption of innocence to protect innocent people from being basically steamrolled by the state."
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