WPS turns to ‘edgy,’ violence-tinged ads to get kids out of gang life

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This article was published 26/07/2023 (775 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An ambitious new social media outreach project seeks to target kids looking to get out of the gang life with ads that look as though they’re from violent video games and a 24/7 text hotline.

The 15-second ads, meant to look like scenes from the popular Grand Theft Auto video game series, depict young teenagers in animated backdrops of Winnipeg locations being entrenched into gangs through violence, drug and weapons sales and sex trafficking. The ads, along with the hashtag #GangLifeisNoLife and the number of a text hotline to reach out to The Link, a long-standing local youth support organization formerly known as Macdonald Youth Services.

The $130,000 project started over a year ago, when members of the Winnipeg Police Service organized crime unit started a working group to figure out how to update outdated outreach and better connect with young people. It quickly became apparent that an “edgy” ad campaign that could quickly grab the attention of young people was necessary, WPS Insp. Elton Hall said Wednesday.

“It was literally a year of meetings, and the meetings didn’t go well,” he said.

“There’s a generational gap between executive members of police down to front-line members… we had to really drop the generational gap and get down to how we’re going to connect with youth, and the traditional way of doing it, which is billboards or TV ads, well, kids don’t watch that. They’re attached to their phone, and you have a 15-second gap to see if you can grab their attention, and we researched that.”

Focus groups with investigators and reformed gang members found interest in a resource that youth could access on their own terms and anonymously. Police will only get involved when The Link reports a criminal activity to the police — for example, if a teenager calls and says they’re being sexually exploited — and data will be collected on how many youth reach out and how well the ads do on social media.

“It’s not the traditional way of sitting in a principal’s office at school because you have a problem and they start calling, obviously that’s not discreet,” Hall said. “But maybe at 10 p.m. at night or 2 a.m. in the morning, when they’re at home and they’re thinking about it, they can reach out and say, ‘Look, this is what I’ve just seen,’ or, ‘This is what I’ve experienced.’”

There will be a person on the end of the line 24-7 to assist them, and that could range from seeking basic necessities to addictions support to shelter away from the people keeping them in the gang.

“We have safe spaces to stay here at The Link. They might be interested in or need food or clothing or basic needs, and we’ll make sure they have access to that as well,” chief executive officer Kerri Irvin-Ross said.

“It really is sort of a navigation role, and if they want to come in and meet with us one-on-one, we will make that happen, as well.”

The ads and hotline are funded by the Manitoba Association of Chiefs of Police Organized Crime Committee and Manitoba Justice.

This is the first large-scale project the MACP has taken on, executive director Gord Schumacher said, and they will build on it if it does well.

“Next year, you’ll see more videos coming out with different topics for the same demographic of people, 13, 14 year olds… we may move it into rural Manitoba depending on the topic, but the plan is to keep this going,” he said.

Just over 31 per cent of people arrested by the WPS organized crime division in 2022 admitted to being in or being associated with a gang. Out of the remaining 69 per cent of people, most were either forced to act on behalf of a gang or were being exploited physically or sexually.

There are dozens of youth street gangs in Winnipeg, and many kids are forced into the life through exploitation and threats of violence, Hall said.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca