Mexican drug cartels are slowly making their way into Calgary as they attempt to secure a foothold in what they see as a wealthy city where users are willing to shell out loads of cash to get high, police say.

The cartels, known for violence and deeply-entrenched networks of distributors, pose a big challenge for city police, Sgt. Jason Walker said Wednesday in an overview of the local gang landscape.

Investigators could spend considerable time cracking down on the cartel’s local drug dealers, only to watch as the arrested offenders are replaced by fresh recruits.

“We have to be mindful of what our impact is going to be on the actual criminal organization,” Walker, an investigator with the Calgary Police Service’s guns and gangs unit, told dozens of residents gathered at a Bowness community hall.

Calgary is home to sophisticated networks of organized crime groups that dodge police detection by learning their tactics and using encryption devices to block investigators from following their illicit movements, Walker said.

While international drug cartels moving into the city is an emerging concern, mid-level gangs – which are organized but don’t have the international reach of the cartels – have caused police and the public the most grief over the past 10 to 15 years.

The gang landscape is much different than it was in the 2000s, when members of the organized groups FOB and FK openly identified themselves, “like a Hollywood gangster,” Walker said.

Many of the same players and affiliations are still pushing drugs and stolen property through underground networks in the city, but under lower profiles.

“Calgary has a very sophisticated organized crime presence,” he said.

Organized crime groups often recruit young people old enough to drive because they can deliver drugs. The runners don’t carry large quantities in case they get busted, and once they’re empty they return to stash houses to reload, Walker said.

Gangsters have deep pockets and access to all the tools to ply their trade: guns, homemade pipe bombs and silencers. They even wear police tactical uniforms on home invasions and assassination attempts to buy “five seconds of credibility before the other guys realize, ‘hey, you aren’t cops.’ ”

And their methods of evading detection are getting increasingly sophisticated. They’re spending thousands of dollars every month to pay for phones with off-shore servers that are encrypted. They have tracking devices to trace the movements of shipments and rival gangs.

“They have a level of technology that is unprecedented to what they were seven, eight, nine years ago,” Walker said.

Police smash organized crime by following up on tips and convincing gangsters to turn on their associates, but officers are also finding considerable success in prevention programs that target youth at risk of winding up living criminal lives.

“The chief has got a vision that that’s where we’ll get the most bang for our buck,” Walker said, “and, long term thinking, I think he’s bang on.”

rsouthwick@calgaryherald.com