Money, drugs and violence: the evolution of White Boy Posse

EDMONTON – A white supremicist gang may be linked to the random shooting of a 34-year-old Saskatoon mother and a decapitated head in a north Edmonton alley, but Mark Totten is hoping the killings don’t inspire “moral panic.”

“The White Boy Posse is not taking over cities in western Canada,” says the Ottawa-based sociologist and social worker. “We need to be concerned, but we have to be realistic. We don’t need to fan the flames and create a moral panic.”

On Tuesday morning, RCMP and other police forces in Alberta and Saskatchewan announced that four men linked to the northern Alberta-based White Boy Posse face seven first-degree murder charges for their part in three high-profile homicides. Two Lloydminster men – 22-year-olds Randy O’Hagan and Kyle Bauer – face multiple murder charges in the shooting of Lorry Santos, a mother of four killed Sept. 12 when she opened the front door of her Saskatoon home, and the death of 35-year-old Bryan Gower, found two weeks later in a rural area northwest of Lloydminster.

O’Hagan faces a third murder charge in the killing of Robert Roth, 54, whose decapitated body was found in a ditch an hour’s drive east of Edmonton on Oct. 20. Four days later, Roth’s head was discovered in an Edmonton alley. Two other men – Nikolas Nowytzkyj, 32 and Josh Petrin, 29 – each face a charge in one of the killings.

The “incredibly violent” White Boy Posse stands out because of its racist ideology, Totten says. But the intent behind the hits – rivalry, discipline or debt-collection – hasn’t been made public. Given its chaotic leadership structure, Totten’s not sure the gang should be considered an organized crime group. He even preaches caution about their ties to other white supremacist groups.

“We’re not really seeing any link between the White Boy Posse and other neo-Nazi youth skinhead gangs in the country,” Totten says. “They’re not just into white supremacy, they’re into making money. And in order to survive and flourish and expand their territory, they have to have an economic base to do that.”

Gang activity is a complex and multi-layered phenomena with varying degrees of sophistication, organization and violence. Edmonton police have previously linked the Alberta-based White Boy Posse to Nazi symbols, street-level drug dealing and affiliations with the Hells Angels, noting that their tentacles reach from Yellowknife to Saskatoon to Medicine Hat. But the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams, a group of about 400 investigators mandated by Alberta’s Solicitor General to address serious and organized crime in Alberta, isn’t saying much about the group beyond its name and connection to three highly unusual, violent crimes.

Totten, who has interviewed hundreds of gang members, says people join these groups to find meaning, protection or to make quick money. His research culminated in Nasty, Brutish and Short, a profile of gang life in Canada. Gang makeup and identities vary, but members often have similar backgrounds. Native gangs, like Redd Alert or the Indian Posse, often hail from remote reserves with experiences of deep poverty and tremendous home violence. Neo-Nazi skinheads, almost solely devoted to spreading racist ideology, are also poor, occasionally homeless. There are exceptions to the rule of deep poverty, like in B.C., where the Independent Soldiers, United Nations and South Asian gangs spring from relative comfort. The lure of fast money is universal.

In his interviews with several White Boy Posse members, Totten noted violent upbringings were a common denominator.

“The families that these guys grow up in are incredibly violent; not just physical violence, but sexual violence as well,” he said. “They’ve endured unimaginable suffering. Now that doesn’t let them off the hook, but it does help us understand how they come to be involved.”

Violent gang activity spiked in Edmonton from 2003-06 during an economic boom that saw 42 gang-related homicides hit the city. In 2007, Edmonton police publicly named the White Boy Posse as one of an estimated 18 or 19 groups. The gang killings weren’t believed to be turf wars, they cautioned, but mostly internal discipline within the violent groups.

Nevertheless, police ramped up their efforts to target gang activity. Edmonton police and RCMP began partnering in 2005, forming the Metro Edmonton Gang Unit a year later. In late 2006, Edmonton police and RCMP jointly targeted the White Boy Posse in a case dubbed Project Goliath.

The White Boy Posse first hit headlines in a 2004 scuffle with the Crazy Dragon Killers, when Posse members began ramming cars of rival dial-a-dopers to disrupt their cocaine-trafficking operation. The Killers retaliated that October by kidnapping and beating two Devon-area members and a high-ranking Posse member. Eight members of the Killers were later convicted in the case.

Fifteen months into Project Goliath, police announced their first arrests. In March 2008 they claimed they had “handicapped” the gang with a series of raids around Edmonton, netting 17 members between the ages of 17 and 33, five more warrants, and various drugs and weapons. A half-year later, three more White Boy Posse members were arrested in southern Alberta while trying to establish trade in Medicine Hat.

The following March, police again claimed they had crippled the Posse after another 18 high-profile arrests, but admitted two months later that only one individual was affiliated with the group.

Tuesday’s announcement broke nearly four years of police silence about the White Boy Posse.

“It’s not what it used to be in the past, where you’d see street gangs that would wear colours,” says Insp. Dave Elanik, in charge of ALERT’s northern combined forces special enforcement unit. “There’s no real allegiance to one group. They’ll move from one group to the next, so that’s where it’s critical to take an integrated approach.”

Gangs have been evolving, says Cathy Prowse, a criminal anthropologist at the University of Calgary who spent 25 years with the Calgary Police. Prowse’s graduate research focused on Vietnamese gangs in Toronto where fluid, mobile membership initially stymied investigators and appears to have influenced gang activity in Canada.

At first glance, the White Boy Posse appears more “traditional,” with tattoos and demarcated membership. Their highly “sensational hits” – like leaving a head in plain view – also strike a familiar chord, clearly intended to send a message.

“Obviously, it’s a ‘notice me, notice me,’ tactic: they’re message shootings and decapatations,” Prowse said. “It’s the old equation: violence leads to power, power leads to money. That’s how you stay on top.”

But that message could cause trouble. “Sloppy” shootings of unintended victims – like the Saskatoon woman – are not good for business for higher-level groups like the Hells Angels, who control weapons and drug flow through transnational networks. Street-level players like the White Boy Posse could find themselves cut adrift by their suppliers if they pick too many fights, Prowse said.

Instability triggered by the arrests, meanwhile, means the gang is likely at its most vulnerable to police investigation.

“This is when you hit them,” Prowse said. “This is your best opportunity; you don’t sit back, let them restructure.”

Of course, gangs don’t simply disappear when arrests are made. Rivalry is endemic in the drug trade. Groups restructure. Police begin gathering new intelligence. And gang members may be sent to correctional institutions where, Totten says, White Boy Posse members have been “very active.”

“Many of our correctional facilities, prisons, jails, young offender centres … they’re gang-infested,” said Totten. “It’s a very violent place, and in order to be protected from other inmates, you have to join a gang.”

He would like to see the conversation move beyond get-tough measures and mandatory minimum sentences to prevention.

“Treatment, really, is very difficult to do inside a correctional facility,” he says. “If our main response to the gang problem is to lock people up, we’re going to be having the same conversation five to 10 years down the road.”