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LISA MULLINS: I'm Lisa Mullins, and this is The World. When you think of cities with high murder rates, Vancouver, British Columbia is not the first name that comes to mind. It's in Canada, after all, and we tend to think of Canadians as pretty peaceful. But in recent months there's been a spike in violence in Vancouver that has citizens and government officials there rattled. Pat Fogarty heads up the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Vancouver, in western Canada. He and his unit have been on the front line of the investigation of the violence. Superintendent Fogarty, what have you discovered is specifically behind the violence?

PAT FOGARTY: Well, I guess if you look at the history of what's going on here, we have a high consumption rate of cocaine particularly in Vancouver. And I'll really just focus on the Vancouver market, per se. So in support of that, there are a number of gangsters that have evolved to support the market and organized crime to import. So a lot of the cocaine of course comes from Mexico and elsewhere in the sort of Spanish speaking countries down there, but Mexico being predominant area. We're centrally located. We have a multicultural community with exceptionally good transport which allows that product to move, and a very, very large customer base both in Canada and – we're attached to the largest market in the world. So the product going south makes it lucrative and the product coming north makes it lucrative.

MULLINS: Okay. The largest market in the world – you're talking about the United States?

FOGARTY: United States.

MULLINS: All right. And then bring in Mexico. I mean, Mexican – the United States has been stepping up enforcement of the drug flow along the US-Mexico border, which one would think would be a very good thing, but the off shoot is that you are having more problems with Mexican drug dealers. What's the connection there?

FOGARTY: Well, we're not having problems directly with the Mexican drug dealers. It's -- the war in Mexico is causing a shortage of supply of cocaine to Canada which affects --

MULLINS: The drug war?

FOGARTY: The drugs. Yeah. There's a shortage of supply of cocaine in Canada which puts people out of business. Only the strongest survive. Well, they're not prepared to just quit and take on a job. These people don't work, so their nexus to wealth is directly related to acquiring that cocaine to sell, to live their lifestyle as they choose. And so that supply route has been cut off. So these are not Mexicans up here that are really in control of the market. They just have those contacts to move that cocaine northward.

MULLINS: So are you saying as well that the drug violence that we hear about all the time, practically on a daily basis in Mexico, that that's causing a shortage which is then causing the violence in Vancouver?

FOGARTY: Yes. The cartels who are fighting the Mexican government aren't able to monitor their cocaine because they're too busy fighting the government to keep those lines going at, you know, full operating capacity up into Canada, and we're seeing the results of the lack of cocaine which is, you know, causing in part the violence up here.

MULLINS: Who's actually committing these murders? How are they happening?

FOGARTY: We have a new set of young gangsters that tend to live by that gun. They're quick to draw the gun. They want that sort of sexiness in their profile. They want to be perceived as very powerful – lots of money, flashy cars, et cetera. So they're far more public than they used to be.

MULLINS: Give us a most recent example.

FOGARTY: One in front of an IGA where the victim – they had followed him there and used automatic type of assault rifles, three different vehicles, shooting in a parking lot of an IGA, missing children within the car by inches. That type of thing, which really scares the public. And that's not something that we tended to see years ago.

MULLINS: Pat Fogarty heads up the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Vancouver. He's been investigating the links between Vancouver's recent spade of murders with the drug trade in Mexico. Thank you very much for your time.

FOGARTY: All right. Thank you.

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