The information comes after the Greater Victoria School Board’s request for “insight” into youth-related gang activity more than a year after its decision to cancel the school police liaison officer program
Saanich police’s Major Crime Unit had 35 investigations linked to gang activity in Saanich schools from mid-2022 through August of this year, according to statistics released by the department this week.
He said the statistics show school- and youth-related gang activity saw a definite uptick in 2023, with incidents that were serious and violent. “There’s some stabbings, victim and witness intimidation, assaults, break-and-enters, threats and drug-related files,” Kowalewich said. The board — which ended the police liaison-officer program on the grounds that the presence of police in schools might cause “trauma and harm” to some Black and Indigenous students — has cast doubt on police warnings about gang recruitment in schools.
A report by Rebeccah Nelems, an academic commissioned by the Victoria Family Court and Youth Justice Committee to review the Mobile Youth Services Team program, said there has been an “exponential increase” in the number of youth dealing with threats to their well-being in the region — citing the opioid crisis and surging gang activity as contributing factors.
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