A former Vancouver police anti-gang squad member says the brazen shooting of 10 people at a gangster's birthday party is a sign that young upstarts with few formal gang ties are moving in to fill a power vacuum in the criminal underworld.

Retired police officer Doug Spencer says the takedown of the Red Scorpions in the Surrey Six massacre, the Bacon Brothers and the United Nations gang in recent years has left a power vacuum in the highly lucrative illegal drug trade.

He says most of the new and younger gangsters moving in to fill the vacuum don't have formal gang names or any kind of real organization or rules.

"There is absolutely no code or morals among these young up-and-coming guys. They're hungry, they want money and they'll shoot whoever's in their way," he says.

One indication of that is the number of women being shot at, something that rarely happened in the past, says Spencer.

"These girls that are hanging out with these guys, they put themselves in the crosshairs of an assault rifle. Their boyfriend is a gangster. He's got a number of enemies and, you know, these guys come shooting, the bullets have no name on them," he says.

High-risk life of crime

Vancouver police say the shooting at the Best Neighbour's Restaurant on Sunday is linked to a surge in gang violence that began with the killing of Gurmit Singh Dhak, 32, a gangster who was gunned down in a Metrotown parking lot in October.

Spencer recalls that nearly 20 years ago he arrested Dhak as a young teenager for extortion. Back then he was a member of a small high school gang known as "Billy's Crew," on Vancouver's south slope.

Gurmit Singh Dhak was gunned down in a Metrotown parking lot in October. (CBC)

Spencer says Dhak was later involved in a drive-by shooting, slowing his car down outside Madison's nightclub so that his accomplice could shoot a rival in the forehead.

In October, Dhak was shot in the parking lot of the Metrotown Mall in Burnaby. Spencer says it's often the same ending for those lured by the easy money of the gangster lifestyle.

"The gang business is pretty lucrative and there's some young kids getting drawn into it for the obvious reasons," he says.

"They think it's all money and glamour. They don't know what comes with it, which is death, drug addiction or jail."

"The only way to stop this is to get the kids when they're young ... as early as Grade 5," says the retired police veteran. Spencer says that's why he now spends his days touring schools and talking to students about the risks of the gangster lifestyle, as part of the Vancouver police's Odd Squad.