For children, an urgent lesson in death
Police and teachers team up to show kids the gruesome results of gang life
Lena Sin The Province
Wednesday, September 19, 2007

In a presentation warning children at Vancouver's Pierre Trudeau Elementary School of the dangers of gangs, Det. Doug Spencer shows them how similar his police pistol is to a replica handgun.

"Do any of you guys know people who've been shot or murdered?" Det. Doug Spencer asks the schoolchildren.

Five hands shoot up in the air.

"Why do you think they get shot and murdered?" Spencer asks.

"Because they're rich and the hobos want their money," a boy in a red hoodie volunteers to giggles and snickers.

The children Spencer is speaking to today are only in Grade 6 and

Teachers were starting to complain that after four years of gang-awareness presentations in high schools Vancouver police weren't targeting the right audience.

Prevention, they stressed, needs to start in elementary school.

So for the first time last year, Spencer and colleague Const. Adam Dhaliwal took their PowerPoint presentation into Vancouver's elementary schools.

"I've dealt with all the gangbangers in the Lower Mainland," Spencer tells the children.

"In my 10 years in the gang squad I've gone to well over 70 funerals. I've seen a lot of death -- way too much death and I'll tell you, if you get involved in gangs, you're one step away from death."

That point is illustrated to the children in its most basic, physical form: The large screen in the front of the classroom displays a large picture of 15-year-old Tuan Van Le, lying limp in the driver's seat, his shirt open and blood spattered across his bare chest.

He was shot dead in March 2000, survived by a mother who was working three jobs and a father in Vietnam, the kids are told.

Then there's Jimmy San Van Nguyen, lying dead on the road next to a yellow sports car, killed in 1998 at the age of 21 after spending his teens extorting from kids around the Kingsway area in Vancouver.

He later became the leader of a Vietnamese gang and was shot 10 to 20 times with an automatic weapon.

The photos are uncensored and gruesome. They have been seen neither by the public nor the press -- but the teachers have insisted they be shown to the children.

Anything less would be a futile effort.

"You're at an age now where you should be able to make the right choices," says Dhaliwal. "We're not here to lecture you -- we're here to give you information and what you do with that information is up to you."

The session ends with Spencer and Dhaliwal showing the children a box full of replica weapons police have seized from various high schools. They warn that when they respond to 911 calls from schools, they can't always tell that the weapon somebody saw is just a toy.

The bell rings. The 60 or so children file out. Some girls, visibly shaken, tell their teacher they think they might throw up.

About 10 boys stay behind, fascinated with the weapons Spencer and Dhaliwal have allowed them to look at up close.

"Me and my brother have a replica gun exactly like that from the dollar store," the boy in the red hoodie says.

A teacher looks on at the boys, and says quietly to Spencer: "Half of our at-risk kids -- they're all right here."

lsin@png.canwest.com