Teen suspects in northeast Calgary shooting were on wait list for intervention program: Centre for Newcomers
'If we're not putting more resources into our social services, well, we're gonna have more problems'
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When Anila Lee Yuen heard the main suspect in a fatal shooting in Marlborough Park on Monday was a 14-year-old, she thought, “Not again.”
It wasn’t the first time Lee Yuen, president and CEO of the Centre for Newcomers, heard of a youth being lured by gang members who exploit their need for belonging and their desire for a better life.
It is why the non-profit offers more than a year-long program that helps such youths meet their goals through counsellors, tutors and mentors, who guide them away from a destructive path.
What was especially heartbreaking for Lee Yuen was the two suspects charged by Calgary police Tuesday are brothers who had been on the program’s wait list for six months.
“Our team and myself and our board members even, as an organization, grieve over these types of scenarios that could have been avoided,” Lee Yuen said.
The 14-year-old boy is charged with first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder following Monday’s daylight shooting in the TransCanada shopping centre parking lot. His 18-year-old brother is charged with one count of accessory to murder after the fact.
Neither can be named to protect the identity of the 14-year-old under provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
Calgary police confirmed Wednesday that a third person was questioned following his arrest on Deerfoot Trail near Memorial Drive earlier in the day, however he has since been released.
The victim of Monday’s shooting has yet to be publicly identified.
Attendees of Centre for Newcomers program face number of social issues
The Centre for Newcomers program, called the Real Me Gang, caters to youth of colour who are referred to the non-profit by various institutions, including schools or the police.
Most of the attendees are dealing with poverty, isolation and discrimination, which leaves them with a lack of belonging and a yearning to rise above their circumstances, Lee Yuen said.
Such conditions are ripe for gang members to exploit them “to distance themselves from criminal liability,” said Mount Royal University criminal justice professor Doug King.
“There’s a long-standing criminological theory that states some people are socially compelled into deviance and crime,” King added.
“They are not given the means to succeed in mainstream society, so they rebel against it by engaging in deviance and criminality, and I think it’s a very simplistic theory but it gives some insight into what’s happening to these extraordinarily young kids who will start on the periphery of gang activity, and then in a couple of years they are right smack dab in the middle of it.”
Intervention program works with 40 youths, with more on wait list
The program by the Centre for Newcomers begins by learning the youth’s interests, then also works with the youth’s family.
“Our success rate is very high,” Lee Yuen said.
At any given time the program works with 40 youths, with the same number on the wait list. The program’s capacity depends on its funding. Lee Yuen said the non-profit would need at least $500,000 to admit those on the wait list.
In recent months, the centre was forced to lay off 60 employees after Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) said it wouldn’t renew its funding, leaving a $4-million hole in the non-profit’s budget.
“If we’re not putting more resources into our social services, well, we’re gonna have more problems,” Lee Yeun said.
Additional programs run by City of Calgary, police
The City of Calgary and the Calgary Police Service also jointly run a few programs for those who display problematic behaviour early on.
The first is more than a year long and is called the Multi-Agency School Support Team (MASS), which, through referrals from schools, accepts children between five and 12 who display defiance and violent behaviour that is indicative of criminality in the future, and have family members convicted of violent crimes or are addicted to illicit substances.
The team is composed of a police officer, a social worker and a clinician from AHS, who mentor and monitor the child. “It’s a wraparound support for not only the youth but for the youth family,” said acting Staff Sgt. Rod MacNeil of CPS’s youth services section.
MASS, which accepted 200 children in 2022, is complemented by CPS’s Youth at Risk Development Program, which comprises teams that work with about 150 youth aged between 10 to 17 who “are currently at risk, affiliated with a gang or involved in gang activity,” the city’s website states.
“We are seeing an uptick in the youth becoming involved in criminal activity,” MacNeil said. “Does it all have to do with gangs or organized crime? No, but, of course, we’d be foolish if we didn’t think there was some.”
CPS also hosts a day-long program called YouthLink that educates students on recruitment techniques deployed by gangs through a virtual session with an actual member named Michael Roberto, who was convicted of five murders in Calgary and is currently imprisoned.
Yet, some youths fly under the radar. But it’s the responsibility of the community to reach every youth at risk of joining gangs, Lee Yuen said.
“If this 14-year-old had been able to get into the program when they were referred, then maybe somebody wouldn’t be dead right now,” she said.
