The long-awaited report is now in regarding the shootout last year at the Cobalt Hotel downtown between two rival gangs and one thing is clear: these drug gangs are increasingly being forced into the margins of society and out of our neighbourhoods as they desperately try to find ratholes to live in.
This is due to the work of one man, Keith Greveling, his council the British Columbia Council of Insurance Ethics, and his incredible efforts to force the property insurance industry to deny organized crime members the opportunity to purchase property insurance for their hideouts and drive them out of respectable neighbourhoods.
In the case of condominiums especially the rule is usually no insurance no ownership. And this leads to shootouts in fleabitten hotels not our streets and avenues.
But along the way he’s picked up some very intriguing enemies, with backgrounds we the people would find startling and disturbing. It may be that we’ll be finding out that there are bigger problems in our society than we would have imagined.
But rest assured that slowly but determinedly the criminal gangs are being forced onto the sidelines and we will continue to monitor this and tell the story here as it unfolds.
