Quasi-gangs are emerging in HRM, says Halifax Regional Police Chief Frank Beazley.

Beazley told the municipality’s police commission on Monday that criminals are coming together and working in groups. However, they are leaderless and not organized.

“It’s relatively new,” Beazley said in an interview. “It’s the latest information that’s been shared with me by my enforcement units.”

It’s a phenomenon that’s resurfacing, he noted. More than six years ago, Beazley said three or four groups were fairly active but they eventually stopped and disbanded because they weren’t organized.

“I would suspect some of this stuff will stop too, but right now we’re seeing about a half-dozen groups,” he declared.

The offences being committed by these groups involve drugs and violent crime.

“They’re not the kind of gangs you think of when you go to the movies where you see the Crips and the Bloods. They’re groups of young people coming together under a banner and sometimes that banner is where they live, or some name they’ve made up.”

Last fall, HRP created a drugs-and-gangs unit to target mid-level drug dealers, as they’re the ones most likely to be armed, police say. The unit uses intelligence information to identify suspects and then comes up with a plan to disrupt the criminal activity, using other enforcement units to do so.