News that a new regional police force will be created to fight organized crime is long overdue.

After all, policing in this province is already too much of a patchwork, with almost a dozen or more organizations involved in crime fighting, and at least three of them with a focus on crime that is predominantly gang-related.

As reported by Black Press, the ministry of the solicitor general plans to combine the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit-British Columbia (CFSEU-BC), the Integrated Gang Task Force (IGTF) and the Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Unit into one police agency.

There are politics, of course. There always is when control and jurisdictions are on the table. Delta Mayor Lois Jackson has opposed a regionalized police force, saying it would prevent local communities from setting their own policing priorities.

The fact the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT) is not apparently being considered in the merger is because the powers that be need to tiptoe around the fact the Vancouver Police Department, the largest in B.C., is not part of IHIT, while it does participate in the other three.

There are reports of persistent friction between municipal police officers and RCMP, partly due to their different approaches to policing.

If politics and infighting counted for points in the war against organized crime, the good guys might be winning the war by now.

But they don’t, and we aren’t.

The past six months have seen so many murders and shootings—even the killing of a young mother with gang connections driving a car while her preschooler sat in the back seat—that we’ll soon be in danger of becoming desensitized, regarding such events as commonplace as hikes in gasoline prices.

That’s why police in the region need to figure out a way to join forces, share intelligence, and put gangs out of business.

Either that, or round up all the gangsters, lock them in a room together and let them sort it out—with or without weapons.