Charges have been laid against two alleged senior members of the 856 gang in connection to alleged drug trafficking activities in Langley.
Leonard Pelletier, 48, has now been charged with five counts of possession of a controlled substance for the purpose of trafficking.
Jason Francis Wallace, 26, is charged with six counts of possession of a controlled substance for the purpose of trafficking. In July 2014, three alleged high-ranking members of Aldergrove’s 856 gang were arrested and B.C.’s gang unit shut down their drug making facility at a mansion on an acreage in Langley.
The Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit seized $400,000 worth of cocaine, meth, heroin, oxycontin and a large quantity of drug-making paraphernalia from a 10,000-square-foot home in the 4600 block of 236 Street.
The home, which was cut up into apartments, housed a 20-tonne press to make the cocaine bricks and other illicit drugs and paraphernalia. Among the drugs, police seized 44 kg of super buffer, which is used to dilute cocaine so they can “double their profit.”
The buffer was actually pig dewormer. The July seizure was one of the largest CFSEU has carried out and police believe this will put a big dent in the 856 gang’s business and operations.
The three Langley men arrested at the scene were 23, 25 and 47. They were released pending charges, said Sgt. Lindsey Houghton at the time.
The 856 gang, named after the telephone prefix for Aldergrove, started a decade ago “as a bunch of young punks and thugs in Aldergrove doing street-level drug dealing,” said Houghton.
But they have grown and continue to recruit new members from Aldergrove, he confirmed.
They aren’t at the level of other gangs in the area like the Red Scorpions, but have become the dominant drug trafficking gang in the Yukon, Yellowknife, NWT, parts of Alberta and Fort St. John.
“They will muscle their way into a market that is kind of untapped and take it over,” said Houghton. In April, weapons, drugs and cash were seized and arrests made in the Yukon, tied to the 856 gang.
Among the items seized were ‘856’ black T-shirts.
In 2007, Pelletier and his teenage son were shot at and run off the road in his Hummer while he was driving his son to D.W. Poppy Secondary. The drive-by shooter was never caught. At that time, police said the Pelletier family had gang ties.
Wallace was sentenced to house arrest for stabbing another teen at a Brookswood Secondary grad party in 2007. Wallace had reportedly crashed the party. The 18-year-old victim was also shot in the buttocks, but the shooter wasn't identified.