Paramedics assist a man (Jonathan Bacon) who was killed in a gang - related shooting outside a casino in Kelowna, B.C. on Sunday, Aug. 14, 2011.
CRIME
The rise and fall of the Bacon brothers
Employing a combination of smarts and muscle, the three siblings from Abbotsford became one of the most successful – and most feared – gangs in British Columbia’s criminal underworld. Sunday’s slaying of Jonathan Bacon brought a swift and bloody end to their violent career
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Jonathan Bacon— John Van Putten/The Abbotsford News
When Jonathan Bacon and his younger brothers Jarrod and Jamie burst onto the Abbotsford crime scene soon after getting out of high school just over 10 years ago, they were hungry, reckless and bold enough to take a shortcut to success.
Until he was slain in a drive-by gang shooting outside a Kelowna casino on Sunday, Jonathan led his brothers and their Red Scorpions gang on a decade-long crime rampage that terrified neighbours and even intimidated their gang rivals.
“The Bacons brought something different to the table. They made it very, very clear that they were not afraid of anybody,” said Inspector Andy Richards of the Port Moody police, who has been investigating gangs in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland for 30 years. “That really aggressive style ultimately paid some dividends for them.”
Police say the Bacon brothers kicked off their crime career by breaking into and stealing from the many marijuana grow-ops flourishing in the area. “Instead of doing all the hard work and logistics, they would just go and rip them off,” said Detective Andrew Wooding of the Abbotsford Police Department’s gang suppression unit. “They cut their teeth that way.”
The youthful gangsters quickly moved on to the huge profits to be made in so-called dial-a-dope operations, where criminals hand out 24/7 phone numbers, often on a business card, that clients can call for speedy delivery.
“That’s where the real money can be made, controlling those phones,” said Det. Wooding, estimating a single line could bring in up to $5,000 a day. “They had all kinds of drugs, every commodity covered.”
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Jonathan Bacon walks in and out of Abbotsford Court House Abbotsford on June 6, 2008.
Det. Wooding described Jonathan Bacon as a “very smart, shrewd businessman,” providing the brains behind the gang while his younger – and much beefier – brothers Jamie and Jarrod lent the needed street savvy and muscle.
Facing stiff rivalry from bigger operations like the UN gang based in Abbotsford and the powerful B.C. Hells Angels, the brothers realized they had to expand beyond a family enterprise.
Ultimately, they reached out to the Red Scorpions gang, formed several years earlier in a youth detention centre, and in effect took them over in 2006.
But that only seemed to escalate the violence.
In September of that year, Jonathan Bacon miraculously survived getting hit with eight bullets outside his parents’ home in Abbotsford.
He died on Sunday at the age of 30.
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A tribute poster for 22 year old Chris Mohan, innocent bystander killed in a drug related massacre, hangs in his mother Eileen Mohan's Surrey BC home on November 12, 2007. x— Lyle Stafford/For the Globe and Mail
In the years following the 2006 shooting, violence in the neighbourhood increased.
A neighbour near the Bacon's Abbotsford family home who would not give her name said she and other residents on the street, lined with spacious houses fronted by immaculate lawns and gardens, spent years with the shadow of criminal activity hanging over them.
She curtailed her normal routine, intimidated by muscled young men who made no attempt to hide the fact that they were wearing body armour when they got out of their cars in the driveway.
Afraid to spend too much time in her front yard, she cut back on her gardening and fumed when a nearby elementary school went into lockdown when there was gunfire on her street.
When the family moved away last year, the neighbourhood seemed to exhale.
“You hear children playing in the street, you see them on their scooters,” the woman said. “This street was dead – no one would let their children out.”
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Jarrod Bacon leaving the Surrey courthouse on October 27, 2009 after a court appearance involving weapons charges against him in relation to the Surrey six killings.— Laura Leyshon for the Globe and Mail
By 2008 and 2009, a wave of gangland shootings in Vancouver – much of it sparked by the rivalry between the Bacon brothers and their opponents – led to a crackdown and eventually multiple arrests of Red Scorpion members.
“They were lucky to have survived that long,” said Insp. Richards. “They were living on borrowed time.”
Today, Jarrod Bacon, 28, is behind bars and has a court date in early September to face charges of conspiracy to traffic cocaine.
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Jamie Bacon— ctvbc.ca
Jamie Bacon, at 26 the youngest brother and a former high-school provincial wrestling champion, was sentenced to seven years in prison on drugs and weapons charges in 2010.
He could face life behind bars when he goes to trial for first-degree murder for his alleged role in the Surrey Six slayings, in which six men – including two bystanders – were gunned down in a Surrey apartment in October, 2007.
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Paramedics assist a man (Jonathan Bacon) who was killed in a gang - related shooting outside a casino in Kelowna, B.C. on Sunday, Aug. 14, 2011.
Jonathan Bacon was scheduled to appear in Surrey provincial court next month on drugs and weapons charges, perhaps confident he would beat that rap.
But he never made it, shot dead on Sunday at the age of 30.
The Bacon brothers were enamoured with the criminal lifestyle and they persuaded themselves they were invincible,” said Det. Wooding. “Now they’ve paid the ultimate price. No matter how mean and tough you think you are, someone with a gun can always take you out.”
